


Life in Botany Bay

by The_Dancing_Walrus



Series: Not Quite Khalsa [3]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Cultural Differences, Cultural References, Diplomacy, Families of Choice, Fem!Khan, Multi, kirk is the kirk hence rating, no seriously there is diplomacy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-31
Updated: 2014-11-09
Packaged: 2018-02-15 13:55:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 28,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2231574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Dancing_Walrus/pseuds/The_Dancing_Walrus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kidnapped by the escaped Augments and held prisoner Captain James T Kirk attempts to gain an understanding of the Federation's newest enemies. After all it could mean the difference between peace and a second Eugenics War. </p><p>Assuming he can get back to Federation space and that Khan is telling the truth when she says she intends to keep him alive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This work is completed and will be updated weekly, one chapter at a time. Chapters vary in length but most are around nine pages. Updates Sunday evenings because I need something to take the sting out of Mondays.
> 
> Footnotes on translations and specific references appear at the end of each relevant chapter along with general notes. Translation errors are my own fault.

He’s not sure what species she is but she has skin like the Caribbean sea, all warm blues with lighter interlinked lines like ripples patterning it. She doesn’t have a single hair he can see, but she has eyes like a summer sky and a smile that puts Uhura’s to shame.

 

Her name’s Tiri, and she says it with an odd stress, like there’s a d and a z in with the t somewhere.

 

They talk about travelling and how terrible freeze dried food is, the things and peoples they’ve seen. He tells her about the planet killing volcano his crew froze from the inside out and the ice-world his First Officer once marooned him on. She tells him about a civilisation made up entirely of merchants and a kind of spotted marsupial-people where the male carries the child in a pouch above his belly.

 

And at some point, after quite a few drinks, her hand finds its way, curiously, tentatively into his hair. She strokes it, runs her fingers through it and then she smiles at him-

 

He comms the ship and tells Chekov he’ll be gone a couple more hours on the way back to her place.

 

Her room is round and the walls are painted in rows of terracotta and ochre triangles. She sets the lights at about seventy percent and invites him to lounge with her on a set of red cushions. They turn to face each other, one of her hands finds its way back to his hair, his settles on her hip. The bone is at a different angle to a human one and he rubs his hand over that slightly-off curve.

 

They talk seriously for a moment about…compatibility. Neither of them are made of anything caustic or poisonous as far as they can tell from quick scans.

 

She’s not exactly a woman, but there are still plenty of things they can do. He gives her a brief run down of human male physiology and she tells him how certain wavelengths of light, intense light, affect her kind when concentrated on the skin. She has a selection of things a little like old fashioned laser pointers that she shows him how to use.

 

Her people kiss the same way so they start with that. He runs his hands down her back and up her sides, getting a sense of her figure under the baggy cotton-like dress she wears. Her hands snake down from his hair to tug his shirt up and they pause, fascinated, over the smattering of hair on his chest.

 

He lets her pull his shirt off before he tries to find whatever it is that’s holding her dress together and take it to bits. He ends up pushing it off her shoulders and down and-

 

She’s beautiful. Absolutely stunning. The rippling pattern forms little knots above her belly button and she gives a pleased sigh when he touches them. He gropes for her laser pointers and she grabs his wrists with a grin. He struggles but she’s strong. She rolls on top of him and honestly it’s not that bad where he is.

 

She pins his hands above his head and he squirms just for the hell of it. Why would he want to escape that view?

 

She leans in to kiss him, pushing him down into the cushions. She puts everything into the kiss, it’s hard and thorough and she tastes almost like lemonade. Then she slows down, one of her hands dives into the cushions for something and-

 

He feels a hypo prick his neck.

 

She pulls back and he struggles, really struggles but the room above him is already spinning, his arms are already starting to feel heavy and clumsy and numb-

 

“I’m sorry.” She whispers and she looks like she really means it.

 

Then she blurs into the reds and yellows of her apartment. The world starts to go gradually grey at the edges and he fights it, he struggles-

 

But everything goes black.

 


	2. Chapter 2

 

Captain James Tiberius Kirk woke up in a strange starship with a head ache and no sign of his shirt. Which was a much more unusual occurrence than certain sections of Starfleet seemed to think. He rolled over enough to get a view of more than the ceiling and found himself staring at a space-saver unit he recognised. Federation vessel then, Earth design and definitely not his ship because he knew for a fact that the crew quarters on the Enterprise were roomier than this.

 

He tried to judge what class of ship she was from the lay out, the size, but he still felt like his head was being stuffed with wire wool. The lights were too high and he could hear voices nearby, out in the main corridor may be, chattering in….something that was definitely not English but also not Klingon-

 

Kirk forced himself to sit up despite having a pretty good idea of what it would do to his head. Then he rubbed his hands over his eyes and tried to convince himself that his brain was not drilling its way out of the front of his skull. He wondered what he’d been drinking and then-

 

Then he remembered.

 

Tiri. Tiri and her gorgeous blue skin and the hypo and-

 

He had to get out.

 

Kirk surged to his feet, ignoring the way his head throbbed and his vision blurred. The door would be locked but may be he could bypass it if he could lever off a panel close enough to the control system on the other side and-

 

He turned to where the door should have been. They’d removed the wall connecting to the corridor and in its place was something that looked suspiciously like the security mechanism the Enterprise had in her Brig. He staggered towards it, as if putting a hand on the glass-like prison wall was the only thing that would confirm it was real. He was a little more than a stride away when he noticed his jailors.

 

Someone had put a bench out just in front of his cell. On it were four children, the oldest around fifteen and the majority perhaps ten, frozen in the middle of a squabble. For a long moment they stared at him, mouths hanging open and Kirk stared back.

 

Who in their right mind-

 

Then the skinny brown boy in the green sarong punched the taller Chinese girl next to him and broke the silence.

 

“See? I _told you_ he wasn’t dead.”

 

“I didn’t say he was dead!” The girl protested.

 

“Did too.” The boy with long, wild hair put in.

 

“I did not!”

 

“Yeah you did-” The boy in the sarong interrupted just before the oldest girl, a short scowling Indian, knocked him on the back of the head.

 

“Sekar!”

 

“Ow!”

 

They glared at each other, making the long haired boy clap a hand over his mouth in an attempt to stop himself from giggling. The Chinese girl let out a long suffering sigh and approached the cell with the sort of serious expression only truly mastered by con artists and the very young.

 

“Hello Captain.” She said solemnly, standing to attention as best she could. “Masiji left me and Amita to watch you. Masiji said we should tell you no one’s going to hurt you and that we left your crew alone.”

 

“Who’s Masiji?” Kirk queried in a voice that was surprisingly normal considering the drinks and whatever had been in that hypo.

 

“Auntie.” The long haired boy translated.

 

“Someone should find her now he’s awake.” The older girl (was she Amita?) said staring pointedly at the boys.

 

They ignored her for the handful of seconds it took for the Chinese girl to volunteer and fell into another argument while she trotted off down the corridor.

 

Kirk tried to shift his focus away from how surreal the whole situation was long enough to figure out who might have snatched him. The…children guarding him looked human enough, there were surgical procedures that could make an alien look superficially human and vice versa but who would do that to a kid? Who would let kids on their ship anyway, it was moronic, a disaster waiting to happen-

 

Pirates may be? Or bounty hunters? In an old Federation vessel they’d scourged off a scrap heap somewhere or a derelict they’d salvaged and patched together?

 

That didn’t seem to fit.

 

The kids seemed to have reached a lull in their little dispute and they were likely to be less guarded than their ‘Auntie’ so Kirk took the opportunity to ask who they were.

 

“Amita Kaur.” The girl replied warily.

 

“Sekar Laylasen.” The boy in the sarong announced.

 

“Kit.”

 

Amita shot a pointed look at the long haired boy who crossed his arms.

 

“Mamaji says we should worry about surnames when there are more than a hundred of us.”

 

“Yeah but he spends so much time in engineering the ship’s cooked his brains-” Sekar observed.

 

“Where’d you get your ship?” Kirk asked, before they started squabbling again.

 

“Do you like her?” Kit enthused, giving him a wide, gap-toothed grin. “Masarji did something to the warp core and now she goes _really_ fast!”

 

“How fast?”

 

“Fast!” Kit insisted.

 

“Warp five?” Kirk suggested.

 

The boy shook his head and grinned.

 

“Warp six?”

 

Kit shook his head.

 

If that was correct then they really were fast.

 

“Warp seven?”

 

That was…not good news. Kirk kept his smiling expression and tried to work out how many ships exactly the Federation had that were almost as fast as the Enterprise and-

 

He had a horrible suspicion he knew exactly where he was.

 

“Do you two have nothing better to do with your time than torment your sister?”

 

The boys started protesting well before the woman got far enough down the corridor for Kirk to see her. Kit held that they weren’t ‘tormenting’ anybody while Sekar insisted they were there to see the Starfleet Captain and that they had just as much right to as the girls with a side in the general unfairness of life-

 

When she stepped into view she had her hands raised for silence. The children obeyed. She was tall and slender with cinnamon skin and black hair to her waist. Her nose was long and straight, her eyebrows were like a single stroke of ink across her face-

 

Striking rather than beautiful.

 

She considered the boys with slightly bemused expression before sentencing them to cleaning up the mess hall. They protested while Kirk tried to remember if he had seen her before. They had given in and trudged off by the time he was satisfied that he hadn’t.

 

The woman planted herself in front of the cell and smiled at him.

 

“Captain Kirk.”

 

“You must be Khan.” He guessed.

 

Her smile widened. “Correct. I’m sure you have questions. Would you like to make pointless threats and shout for a while or can we do this rationally?”

 

“Where’s my crew?” Kirk grated.

 

“On the Enterprise I assume.” She replied easily. “We haven’t attacked them and we didn’t take you on behalf of anyone else so unless they’ve caused a galactic war in your absence-”

 

She finished with a shrug and a small smug smile that made Kirk want to punch her.

 

“Why am I here?” He demanded.

 

Her smile fell away.

 

“We have information on what we believe is a threat to Earth’s security-”

 

“You looked in a mirror?” Kirk suggested.

 

Khan laughed in a short bark. “Do you know the Klingons have been expanding their fleet since Qo’noS? Of course you do. Do you know they’ve come up with a new class of ship that has superior shields and weapons capabilities to the Federation standard and they have an unusually high number of them around the Vulcan system?”

 

The debris, the dust and magnetic cloud there would hide ships from sensors that weren’t looking too closely, like Saturn’s rings. It was…possible-

 

“How many?” He asked.

 

“We captured three.”

 

“Three ships doesn’t make an invasion fleet.” He pointed out.

 

“And how many ships can seventy three adults adequately crew Captain?”

 

“I don’t follow.”

 

“There comes a point when my people would be spread over too many vessels and hence become ineffective. We took what we reasonably could-”

 

“How many?” Kirk interrupted.

 

“We fought five. Sensor data suggested up to fourteen more, which, yes does not constitute an invasion but is a sizeable fleet, close to your borders.”

 

“And you kidnapped me to what? Pass that on to the Admiralty?”

 

“Not precisely.” Khan admitted. “We’re giving you one of the ships.”

 

“What?”

 

Which was really the wrong thing to say but the idea was so insane he couldn’t quite hold it back. Even though he knew it was incredibly stupid to let someone like Harrison, someone like _Singh_ , know how much they’d unsettled him.

 

Khan treated him to her smug superior smile. “I believe you heard me Captain. It’s a good ship, a little slow, but that’s Klingon warp cores for you-”

 

Kirk ground his teeth together in an effort to stop himself from informing her that this was completely insane. He caught her eye and held her gaze for a few moments until her mocking smile faded.

 

“Yes, I realise it appears…counterintuitive.” She admitted with a sigh. “Let me put this as simply as I can. Earth was our home. Whatever our opinions on her leaders and admirals we do not want Earth or her people to suffer.”

 

She trailed off, studying him and Kirk’s glower darkened.

 

“You don’t actually expect me to believe that.” He stated.

 

“No. You are not that stupid. So perhaps we had best avoid explanations you would refuse to consider?”

 

He didn’t respond.

 

“Very well. We are taking you to the outskirts of the Sol system. We expect the journey will take around three days. Once there we intend to transfer you to the Klingon vessel and activate a distress signal. Starfleet should pick you up within an hour. You will not be harmed.”

 

She paused; spread her hands as if she was trying to placate him. “There is no proof I could give you that your crew are unharmed. None you would accept at least.”

 

Which was true, even if Kirk had no intention of admitting it.

 

She stood for a while as though she was waiting for something. Then she stepped neatly to the side and the cell door slid open.

 

It slid open-

 

For a moment he stood, lost for words trying to process exactly what would make her-

 

Khan had already turned her back on him.

 

“Amita,” She began, making the girl practically snap to attention. “Please give Captain Kirk a tour of the ship.”

 

Kirk took an experimental step and found that the barrier had indeed retracted and….a tour of the ship?

 

“Yes Masiji.”

 

“And Lan, will you please tell Krishna that if he goes anywhere near the Captain I will put him in the Brig and the Captain will take his quarters.”

 

“Yes Masiji!” The Chinese girl piped up with a bright smile.

 

“You’re letting me out?” Kirk asked, which was probably not the most intelligent or logical question but-

 

“My, is it that obvious Captain?” Khan replied without bothering to face him.

 

“Why?”

 

She paused, tensed and when she turned her expression was as cold and unreadable as Singh’s.

 

“You are outnumbered, outclassed and outgunned. We are deep in space, there is nowhere to escape to. You are not physically capable of harming my crew and with the exception of myself and my husband you have no reason to try. Captain if you believe that we should mistreat you simply because you are on a different side then I am afraid we are not going to get along at all.”

 

She strode off down the corridor before he’d come up with a retort, which he was going to put down to the hangover and whatever the hell they’d had him drugged with. Next time he’d spend a little less time introducing aliens to Cardassian Sunrises-

 

And make sure he actually told his crew where he was going-

 

And try to make sure the story of _how_ exactly Khan had managed to get hold of him didn’t get out because the last thing he needed was his enemies conspiring to keep him trapped in monogamy or worse celibacy.

 

God Bones was never gonna let him hear the end of this-

 

Assuming he actually got out of this alive.

 

Khan was obviously confident he couldn’t escape. Too confident. Even factoring in a superiority complex bigger than Singh’s, even with an ego larger than a planet, even if she’d underestimated him to the point of dismissal. There was some kind of plan at work here or, Kirk was starting to suspect, a test.

 

They were putting Starfleet on trial and using him as a stand-in for the entire Federation.

 

He’d believe that crap about the Klingons when he saw a ship.

 

In the meantime he was going to find a way out and gather every last scrap of intel he could about this place before he left.

 

And since Khan had volunteered a tour guide…

 

Kirk turned a dazzling smile on the teenager who was probably supposed to be his guard because if he was going to be finding out as much as possible about these people he might as well begin the charm offensive now.

 

“So, Amita, may I call you Amita?”

 

She nodded, slowly, warily and Kirk tried to remember the chat he’d had with her mother, well assuming Layla was her ‘mother’.

 

“I’m guessing we’re on deck five-”

 

“Deck six, Captain.” She corrected.

 

Which on a Miranda class meant mostly crew quarters with a shuttle bay near the back. Probably the better choice since the other decks with crew quarters had closer access to the computer core or the larger shuttle bay.

 

“So this is all crew then.”

 

“No Captain,” She corrected her tone calm and even. “This level is mostly storage and archives. There are some workshops as well.”

 

Why, Kirk wondered, did she keep calling him ‘Captain’ when she didn’t call Khan that?

 

“What kind of archives?” He enquired.

 

“I can show you.”

 

-o-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> General note on use of kinship terms- None of the Augments are genetically related to each other. The terms used may express an equivalent relationship (people raised together viewing each other as siblings), a form of respect (calling older individuals ‘uncle’ or ‘auntie’), a close friendship (calling someone ‘brother’ or ‘sister’) or generally how that individual sees the person they’re talking about (using ‘brother-in-law’ as an insult, ‘grandmother’ for older individuals, ‘daughter’/’son’ for younger ones etc). Multiple languages may be used for this, a society of multinational geniuses seems likely to be multilingual.
> 
> Masiji- My Mother’s Sister, respectful term. Punjabi.  
> Kaur- Female Sikh surname. Literally ‘Princess.’  
> Laylasen- Matrynomic. ‘Layla’s son’.  
> Mamaji- My Mother’s Brother, respectful term. Punjabi.  
> Masarji- My Mother’s Sister’s Husband, respectful term. Punjabi.  
> Singh- Male Sikh surname. Literally ‘Lion’.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes and translations at the end.

 

They didn’t look like much more than particularly eclectic junk rooms and his guide didn’t offer any explanation. Which meant the test had probably started.

 

They’d installed shelving in the walls and he started with that taking a few sheets of paper out from under a kind of wooden stamp. The first six were music. The next eight looked like Arabic but the writing only covered sections of the pages, a corner on one and a few lines at the bottom of another. Kirk replaced them and moved on.

 

There was an acoustic guitar on the shelf below and sketches of a building that looked almost like a sandcastle covered in spikes.

 

 Fragments. 

 

Jim had a feeling he knew what they were storing here, but he kept going anyway. He flipped through more handfuls of Arabic script, pausing at a circular diagram divided into sections, looking for pictures. There were more buildings in that bizarre sand-castle style, a man in a turban with his face half-veiled, a series of mountainous landscapes-

 

A record of things that had vanished over three hundred years.

 

“You know,” Kirk said finally. “We do still have guitars.”

 

“But no one plays them like Ali Farka any more.” Amita replied.

 

And Kirk couldn’t really argue with that because he had no idea who Mr Farka was.

 

“Why don’t you store this in the computer?” He asked instead.

 

“Oh we do.” The girl assured him. “It’s just that some of it-”

 

She shrugged.

 

Some of it, Kirk supposed, needed to be kept on hand, physically there, to seem real. He thought about asking where it was all from but-

 

Instead he put the sketches back on their shelf.

 

“You said there were workshops.”

 

“Yes, Captain.” She confirmed. “There are six on this deck. Would you like to see them?”

 

“Why not?”

 

-

 

He wasn’t entirely sure what he’d been expecting, but the first workshop looked like it was devoted to more old fashioned metal and woodwork than could comfortably fit in the available space. The second had consisted mostly of dissected PADDs, a variety of models. He made a note of where that workshop was because it would probably be a good source of any small electronic parts he’d need for his escape.

 

The third workshop contained a lot of piping, gently bubbling bottles, something he was almost certain was a still and a woman who appeared to be gently encouraging the underside of the still with a hammer.

 

She craned to see them as the door slid open and swore like an enlisted man on a back water outpost. Kirk wondered if telling her that Khan had actually let him out was a good idea while she untangled herself from the plethora of alcohol producing equipment. Once she’d managed to stand up straight he realised she was as tall as Bones, may be a little taller. Which when he thought about how strong Singh had been was a little intimidating-

 

She turned on Amita and crossed her arms.

 

“Christ how long has he been wandering around half naked?” She asked in a conversational tone. “Couldn’t you get him some fucking clothes?”

 

Amita protested. “Masiji said-”

 

“I’m pretty sure she didn’t say drag him round the ship in his pants-” She stopped, as if she’d just remembered something and turned to Kirk. “Sorry about this. We’ll find you something. Do you shave your chest or are you Federation lot all hairless?”

 

Amita looked slightly scandalised but the woman just shrugged.

 

“What? If you didn’t want me to ask you should have got him a shirt.”

 

Amita attempted to object but the woman had already turned back to Kirk.

 

“You,” She said, gesturing at Kirk with her hammer. “Look like shit.”

 

“Do you treat everyone like this?” Kirk asked in an amused tone.

 

The Augment shrugged. “Pretty much. You want breakfast?”

 

He wasn’t entirely sure if eating anything was a good idea. But it was generally easier to get people talking over a meal, to get them to relax. So he smiled and she grinned back at him making the freckles on her cheeks merge together.

 

“Generally I try to get a girl’s name before we go out for dinner-”

 

“Or breakfast.” She corrected.

 

“Or breakfast.” Kirk agreed.

 

“Ffion. Wales. Class Four.”

 

The pause suggested Wales was not her second name, though he wasn’t entirely sure what its significance was. Class Four was probably a rank-

 

“James Tiberius Kirk.” He offered making her laugh.

 

“Captain we all know who _you_ are.”

 

-

 

They'd replaced the tables and chairs in the mess hall with a series of low tables surrounded by cushions that reminded Kirk of Klingon ships. They'd also removed the walls surrounding the galley, to make it easier to get into he supposed. It made the place look a little like an open plan kitchen.

 

There were two men sitting at one of the tables over a board game he didn't recognise. They looked up when he came in. The smaller of the two, a white man with thick black hair grinned at him. The black man opposite rolled his eyes.

 

"Don't.” He warned.

 

“Why not?” His companion asked.

 

“It's impolite and uncivilised.”

 

The smile briefly widened into something a little predatory, then he sat back in the cushions raising his hands.

 

“Alright, alright, you win. I'll behave.”

 

The first Augment's expression suggested he didn't believe a word of it, which meant this probably wasn't going to be pleasant but he had expected a certain amount of animosity from Khan's crew. And he'd never find anything by hiding away. So-

 

“Do you mind if I join you?”

 

“If you wish.” The darker man replied.

 

Kirk settled to his right, Ffion collapsed into the cushions between him and the man with the worrying smile.

 

The darker Augment sighed. “Grisha get him water and something to eat.”

 

The pale one, Grisha, rose giving Jim a smirk before strolling off towards the kitchen.

 

“Yosef.” The dark Augment introduced himself. “Ethiopia. Third Class.”

 

Name, country and rank. Why were they introducing themselves with their country after they’d ousted their governments? Come to think of it, why introduce yourself with a country that might not exist anymore three hundred years on?

 

“James Tiberius Kirk.” He responded. “Though I’ve been told introducing myself is a little redundant.”

 

“You are the only new face on the ship.” Ffion pointed out. “Doesn’t really take a genius to make the connection.”

 

“I guess not.” Jim replied with his best self-deprecating smile.

 

They lapsed into silence.

 

Kirk wondered vaguely what had happened to the kids, whether they’d done a poor rushed job of cleaning or whether they were hiding somewhere to shirk the chores they’d been volunteered for.

 

“What’s the game?”

 

Yosef paused in the act of redistributing the counters across the board. “Bao la Kiswahili. Do you play?”

 

“I’ve never heard of it.” Kirk told him honestly.

 

He looked up sharply and Jim wondered what he’d done to suddenly merit the man’s attention.

 

“Do your people still play it?” Yosef asked.

 

What would it be like, Kirk wondered, to wake up not knowing whether chess still existed? Something as basic as the weekly game he’d played with Mitchell until…until Spock had taken to playing him instead.

 

“I don’t know.” Kirk admitted. “I haven’t come across it but that doesn’t mean-”

 

Yosef nodded thoughtfully.

 

“I could teach you.” He offered, which was something Jim didn’t have to consider long before deciding to accept because people talked as much over games as they did over meals.

 

“Don’t do it.” Ffion advised, throwing a protective hand between Kirk and the board. “It’s the dullest thing in the world. It’s so boring it hurts, like someone’s cutting out bits of your brain with a spoon-”

 

Yosef glared across the table at her. “It is a game of patience and strategy which is why she has no time for it-”

 

“Because it’s boring-”

 

“You waste your time and your intelligence turning a spare room into a brewery-” Yosef accused, as though this somehow made her opinion irrelevant.

 

Ffion rolled her eyes. “I am surrounded by prudes.”

 

“Untrue.” Yosef declared as he finished placing the counters.

 

“Prudes, Grisha and Layla.” Ffion corrected.

 

Yosef paused as he passed Kirk half the remaining counters to consider this.

 

“Mostly true.” He announced then turned his attention back to Kirk. “The aim is to engineer a…turn such that I can make no move. You have thirty two kete, which you may use to capture my kete-”

 

The terminology was a little odd, but the essence of it was a mathematical puzzle. The counters moved to set patterns across the looped depressions on the board, clockwise or counter clockwise, to capture the opponent’s count- _kete._ It was, despite Ffion’s summation, fairly good.

 

He lost the first two games quickly. About halfway through the third, which was closer, Amita came through, leaving something light blue that was more like a tunic than a shirt behind. It looked too wide at the shoulders but he pulled it on anyway.

 

By that time he’d learnt that they’d renamed the _Botany Bay_ , had some sort of contact with Romunlans recently and that they were short of credits.

 

The Romunlan connection was definitely worth looking into. A partnership of any sort with the Empire proper seemed unlikely but even if it was through outposts or smugglers contact between the Augments and Romulus wasn’t something he wanted to see continue. The last thing the Federation needed was for Khan to get one of their stealth ships-

 

They’d just started the second round of the fourth game, mdaji or mtaji or something similar, when Grisha came back with Jim’s breakfast.

 

Kirk wondered if it was horribly impolite to ask what it was. It looked like a cross between a brown scrambled egg and an unfortunate sort of mushroom but smelled worryingly meaty. The Augments apparently agreed that it was not promising because Yosef gave Grisha another warning look and Ffion groaned aloud.

 

“For Chrissakes did you have to make him that? He’ll think we’re trying to poison him!”

 

“He might know what it is,” Grisha replied. “And anyway we don’t have much of anything else.”

 

“Those things that look like apricots-” Ffion suggested as Kirk stabbed at the…mushrooms gingerly with a fork.

 

“I think Melati ate the last of those.” Yosef murmured.

 

The mushroom, or perhaps it was more of a fungus, yielded under the cutlery in a way that suggested silicon plastics or raw fat. He tried scooping it up instead but it slithered off his fork and landed back on the plate with a wet plop. He stared at it for a moment before realising the conversation had halted. When Kirk looked up he found the Augments were staring at him.

 

Perhaps hazing with bizarre food was part of the test.

 

“Where did you get this?”

 

“Liberated from a Klingon ship.” Grisha replied with a shrug.

 

Which probably explained a lot.

 

“It really isn’t poisonous.” Ffion informed him with a worryingly earnest expression. “Honestly. It tastes a little like blackpudding-”

 

“But we think it’s supposed to be a vegetable-” Grisha put in.

 

“Or may be a seaweed-” Ffion suggested.

 

“And we have an unfortunate amount of it because half the crew refuses to eat it.” Yosef explained apologetically.

 

“Because it _could_ be from an animal and they’re all religious.” Ffion said with a sigh. “The Hindus, Sikhs and Jains won’t eat meat, full stop. The Muslims say it’s not halal. The Jews say it’s not kosher. You’re not religious are you?”

 

Kirk took another stab at one of the possibly-mushrooms, managing to skewer it.

 

“I’m thinking of converting.” He announced making Grisha laugh.

 

Then, since there wasn’t much else to do and he was damned if he was going to put it off and look like a chicken, he started eating his breakfast.

 

The taste was pleasant enough, like a rich spicy sausage, but the texture was as slimy as raw oyster and as chewy as badly cooked squid. He made a point of chewing and swallowing it anyway. Then he took another bite.

 

They were watching him. Kirk could damn near feel it but refused to look up.

 

“So,” Ffion began in a tone that was much too casual. “You know what it is?”

 

“No idea.” Kirk replied, spearing another.

 

He ate it slowly, steadily, and at some point soon he’d have to find out whether they honestly were getting most of their food by raiding the Klingons or whether this was a joke. That or contract a sudden allergic reaction to the fungus.

 

When the silence stretched he glanced up and found that Ffion had a smile that was worse than Grisha’s. She leaned across the table her expression suddenly serious and intent on Grisha.

 

“Bottle of vodka says he can finish the plate.”

 

He snorted. “Your swill isn’t vodka.”

 

“Moonshine.” Ffion corrected. “And the closest damn thing you’ll get on this ship. Half litre bottle. That’s worth your share of the coffee-”

 

“That’s not worth a third of it-”

 

“Two thirds-”

 

“Forty percent-”

 

“Half-”

 

“Forty-”

 

Yosef took a deep breath and let out a long sigh.

 

“I’m sorry,” He told Jim sincerely. “They have no manners.”

 

“I’d noticed.” Kirk assured him as the other two decided on the terms of their bet and started telling him that he could _easily_ finish off the Klingon fungus and that he really didn’t want to respectively. Jim ignored them.

 

Yosef gestured to the board, possibly on the grounds that it was a tried and tested method for ignoring the rest of the crew. Kirk grimaced and moved-

 

It occurred to him that in the hour or so he'd been sitting there he'd only seen four of them. A Miranda class had a crew component up to 220 but they functioned perfectly well pared down to 50-

 

There were 92 Augments. Layla had said they couldn’t reproduce so that number was likely still accurate. Unless they’d decided to start converting people but that seemed rather a big risk on the edge of space where you were more likely to come across pirates or Starfleet personnel then desperate children.

 

Seventy three adults, Khan had said, and at least four ships. Well he couldn’t be sure about any hypothetical Klingon ships but a Miranda probably wanted at least 30. And with so few crew he didn’t think any of them would have the time to sit around in the kitchen playing Bao la Kiswahili.

 

“How many people do you have on board?” Kirk asked, opting for the direct approach.

 

“Eighteen crew, five children,” Yosef replied, capturing a selection of Kirk’s counters as he spoke. “And you.”

 

Which suggested it was undermanned but then Singh had worked to design a ship that needed the minimum possible crew, perhaps it was mostly automated now.

 

He was trying to work out how to confirm that theory, it would be most obvious on the bridge but he’d never be able to get up there, when Yosef continued.

 

“You can meet them if you wish.”

 

Kirk leaned back as though he was considering. He wondered how far their…unconventional attitude to prisoners stretched.

 

He smiled and tried to look flippant. “Is that a good idea?”

 

Yosef actually seemed to think about it, which may or may not have been a good thing.

 

Eventually he shrugged.

 

“No one will hurt you. It was agreed prior to your abduction that you would not be harmed. You would likely find some of us disturbing but you are equally likely to disquiet a number of us. The decision is yours.”

 

_It was agreed_ , interesting choice of words he decided to think about that later.

 

“So I can see anyone I like?”

 

“You may go where ever you wish on the ship so long as you are accompanied.” Yosef replied.

 

Which was not exactly an answer, at least not to Jim’s question.

 

“So if I wanted to see Mahaan Singh-”

 

Yosef glanced up from the board long enough to give Kirk a particularly sharp look.

 

“That would be unwise.”

 

And it probably wasn’t the time to push that particular point. So instead Jim widened his inane smile.

 

“How about Krishna?”

 

Yosef let out a small snort of a laugh.

 

“You don’t want to meet Krishna.” Ffion told him.

 

“He’s a Урод.” Grisha put in.

 

“A sala.” Yosef agreed.

 

Kirk’s grin edged towards a smirk and somewhere in the back of his mind he wondered what it took for Khan to actually blacklist one of her own crew to protect his delicate sensibilities. Probably more than the generally obnoxious personality his current guards’ tones implied.

 

“Who do you suggest then?” He inquired.

 

Yosef suggested Hakim at the same time as Ffion volunteered Melati.

 

Grisha snorted. “If you introduce him to Hakim he’ll think we’re all orthodox hard line fanatics. If you introduce him to Melati he’ll think we’re all schizophrenic knife enthusiasts.”

 

Yosef protested that Hakim was a perfectly reasonable and tolerant person who happened to think they were all going to hell. Ffion began to explain that Melati’s ability to disembowel a dozen men in a minute with a hair ornament was part of what made her attractive.

 

Jim started to wonder if may be he’d been wrong picking Grisha out as the mad one.

 

“How much of the ship have you seen?” Grisha asked, curiously.

 

Kirk shrugged. “A couple of the archives and a few workshops. What else is there?”

 

“Labs, a gym, a prayer room.” Grisha mirrored his shrug. “We’re a little Spartan I’m afraid, but if you do want to meet the rest of us-”

 

“I’d be better off finishing the tour than sitting here playing board games.” Kirk summarised.

 

There wasn’t really any point in even trying to weigh it up, just seeing them all; putting names and descriptions, personalities, in a file was useful information. Guaranteed intel versus the possibility of perhaps gleaning something about their adjustments to the ship or finding a way out-

 

Their technology could (and probably would) be adjusted pretty quickly especially if they really were in the habit of fighting Klingons, communicating with Romunlans and making their own changes to whatever they got their hands on. But the people, the crew, wouldn’t change. A human weak spot would be a far more consistent target than a technological one.

 

There wasn’t really anything to consider.

 

“There are always a couple of people in the gym.” Grisha suggested helpfully.

 

It seemed as good a place to start as any. So he agreed, noting Grisha’s smirk as he excused himself from the game and rose. Grisha started to get up and Ffion beat him to it.

 

“Sorry ci,” She said with a sweet smile. “But I’m taking him-”

 

Well that was interesting, Jim wondered what he’d done-

 

“Why?” Kirk enquired as she started steering him towards the nearest turbolift.

 

“Because he’s gone out of his way to make sure I lose our bet,” Ffion replied, looking back pointedly at the half-full plate of fungus. “So I don’t see why I should let him make moon-eyes at you all afternoon-”

 

“Moon-eyes?” Kirk repeated struggling to supress a smirk.

 

“Oh you know! That thing guys do when they see something they want like their brain’s liquidised and started leaking out their ears and the pressure differential makes their eyes go all huge and gooey like they’ve had a stroke- Don’t you know that? Do human guys not do that?”

 

“I don’t know,” Kirk responded, amused. “Do we?”

 

Ffion shrugged.

 

“I dunno,” She began in the same casual straight-forward tone she’d used the moment they met. “You’re the only human I’ve met so far wasn’t raising me, giving me orders or trying to kill me. Kinda an insufficient sample size don’t you think?”

 

Initially it didn’t quite register, it was too…too bizarre. In the minute or so it took to reach the turbolift he’d gone over it three or four times and still couldn’t tell what the hell she meant. He was about to ask but the Augment apparently didn’t think it was odd at all because she went right on.

 

“And anyway you can’t make moon-eyes at me cos my wife’d swat you for it. Thalaatha-”

 

The lift doors slid shut.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Like a sandcastle with spikes- Timbuktu, libraries, university and mosque. World Heritage site with one of the largest collections of ancient documents in the world. Mali.  
> Ali Farka- Ali Farka Toure. Malian musician famous for folk music.  
> Masiji- My Mother’s Sister, respectful term. Punjabi.  
> Bao la Kiswahili- Literally Swahili board game. The game has many variants and the most common one in the West is Mancala.  
> Kete- Literally ‘shell’. Counters in bao la Kiswahili and derivatives.  
> The Fungus- Gladst, a Klingon dish that resembles brown leaves or wood ear fungus. I thought it looked foul.  
> Halal- ‘Permitted’. Usually refers to food that is allowed by Islamic law, interpretation varies drastically from country to country and between schools.  
> Kosher- Mispronunciation of Hebrew word for ‘fit’. Food that is permitted by Jewish law.  
> Урод- Freak. Russian.  
> Sala- Brother in law. Literally Wife’s Bother. Punjabi. Apparently usually a pain. Always lacks the respectful ‘ji’.  
> Ci- Dog. Welsh. Refers to a lecherous male.  
> Thalaatha- Three. Arabic


	4. Chapter 4

The gym seemed to be the natural result of stripping the senior officer’s lounge completely bare then decorating the edges of the room with a haphazard assortment of chairs, blunt instruments and edged weaponry. It was a little like a heavily armed version of the bare knuckle boxing rings that existed under some of the worse bars he’d frequented before he’d run into Admiral Pike-

 

He probably should have guessed that their ‘gym’ would have been something like…this.

 

He tried to keep his expression neutral as Ffion led him towards a group of three women. Two of them stood facing each other holding different types of blade, the tallest, a lanky woman with a shock of barely tamed curly hair opposite a small square-faced woman who was the darkest brown of the three. The last one, a tiny thing with a pink cloth wrapped and pinned round her head so that only her face was showing, stood just to the side. The instructor, Kirk guessed, just before she stepped back.

 

The tall Augment dove forward swiping with a machete and her opponent shuffled awkwardly backwards deflecting with an oddly shaped dagger. The weapons clashed and clattered against each other producing a rhythmic din. Somewhere underneath the clamour their instructor was shouting what appeared, from her expression, to be criticism.

 

He let Ffion steer him towards some chairs at the side of the room, keeping his eyes on the fight. The dark girl slashed at her opponent’s stomach but she stepped neatly out of the way and their instructor put her head in her hands as though she was an inch from giving up on both of them entirely. Ffion was trying to talk to him but whatever she said was half-swallowed by the noise.

 

And Jim was busy trying to work out what all of this….meant, whether it was useful-

 

They were fast, the harsh din their blades made as they banged together suggested they were strong- Singh’s physical abilities at least could well be the norm.

 

They weren’t training to fight here, not in a serious way at least. Swords and daggers, however skilfully wielded would not beat phaser fire. But they were using them anyway, training with them anyway and treating it as normal. A gym to them was a giant gladiatorial ring for, apparently regular, knife fights.

 

Kirk found himself wishing he’d paid a little more attention to the Academy’s compulsory anthropology class. Maybe then he could have actually worked out what this said about the way they thought instead of comparing them to half a dozen alien or Federation cultures they didn’t quite line up with. Did these duels mean they regarded violence as normal? Did it indicate a martial culture? Had they been designed to be more aggressive, making these bouts a safe…outlet? Maybe they just thought it was the best way to exercise when you were super-strong and stuck in a confined space-

 

Spock would have had at least twenty insightful observations about the way they interacted and behaved by now. He would have strung a few of them together with unshakeable logic and started forming useful theories.

 

Uhura’s expertise would have made her able to make better and more meaningful comparisons to known species. She would have had something more perceptive than the volume of old fashioned weapons leading to vague association with Klingons. She might have been able to identify which Earth cultures these people had drawn from as well, even if she wasn’t a proper historian. She might have known where ‘Wales’ was-

 

Kirk considered himself a fair and considerate Captain. He appreciated his crew’s skills and knew how much they all relied on each other to keep the _Enterprise_ as successful as she was.

 

But he also thought that as her Captain and the youngest Captain in the Fleet he should have been capable of more. Should have been able to handle the situation somehow. Which he was doing, or would do-

 

After all Starfleet had so little information on them that even the little he’d discovered in the last few hours would be valuable. Being unable to uncover everything didn’t render what he could find useless.

 

It still irked. It felt like an excuse.

 

The dark girl stabbed at the tall one, who didn’t so much duck as sweep gracefully downwards and kick her opponent’s leg out from under her. The dark girl staggered and squawked. She lashed out, which looked like a desperate attempt to keep her balance, and missed. The tall Augment twisted and sprang up almost directly behind her, drew her arm back, machete raised-

 

And flipped the dark girl’s long ponytail into her eyes.

 

She shrieked and flailed while the tall woman danced out of reach, laughing. Their instructor adopted an expression which Kirk took to be a variant on ‘God give me strength’.

 

Kirk didn’t notice anyone signal a time-out but one had apparently been called because both fighters put their weapons down, one with noticeably more care than the other.

 

The tall woman turned a perfect backflip and started walking round the room on her hands. The dark girl started heading towards them but got accosted by the instructor. Kirk glanced towards Ffion on the off chance he might get a translation. She shrugged.

 

“Don’t look at me, my Malay’s awful and my Arabic’s not much better.” She paused and apparently remembered that the initial aim had been to introduce their captive to the crew not watch their brawls.

 

“That’s Melati,” Ffion informed him, gesturing to the instructor. “She’s from Indonesia and she’s only a class four but she’s amazing. Like crazy-Chinese-action-movie amazing but without the wires.”

 

Kirk nodded because he felt that it might be expected of him and something told him pointing out he couldn’t have watched action movies from three hundred years ago might not have been considered polite.

 

“The one doing the cartwheels is Taris. Brazil, which yah know, explains that. She’s class four too. And the one that doesn’t know which end of a dagger to hold is my missus.”

 

He smiled, satisfied that he could remember their faces at least and give accurate descriptions back to Starfleet. And since ‘class four’ was apparently a lower rank these were probably the individuals the fleet was more likely to encounter on trading outposts and outer worlds. They were the ones that would enable the Federation to track their kind.

 

Melati let out a dramatic sigh, adjusted the cloth round her head and waved the dark girl away. It occurred to him that it was the first time he’d seen one of them wearing bright colours and he wondered whether that was significant. It was also, when he thought about it, only the second thing that seemed…impractical. They had all, apart from Sekar, been wearing some variation on trousers and a shirt so far. Different cuts and colours, yes, but similar enough and dull enough that it faded into the background. Perhaps it was the closest thing they’d found to their old uniforms?

 

The dark girl trudged towards them and collapsed despondently in a chair beside Ffion.

 

“We came to watch you suffer.” The Welsh woman told her brightly.

 

“Was I that bad?” Her wife murmured.

 

“Yup.” Ffion confirmed making her groan softly into her hands.

 

“I tried-” She protested.

 

“Naaaw you didn’t.” Ffion countered with a lazy grin. “Not unless you’ve got the killer instinct of a two day old poodle.”

 

“I didn’t want to hurt her!”

 

“Luv she’s five and a half foot of rubber with knives attached, you _can’t_ hurt her-”

 

Their conversation passed briefly into the subtle home-signs he’d noticed Layla use then Ffion leaned back with a sigh and introduced them with a wide sweeping gesture.

 

“Captain, my wife. Light of my Life, the guy who pissed off Mahaan.”

 

“Parvati, India. Class four.” She smiled shyly and he noticed dispassionately that she was really quite pretty.

 

Ordinarily he might have tried to charm her, perhaps said something complimentary about her eyes, but that didn’t seem like a particularly good idea when he was sitting next to her wife. He was trying to decide on a different approach as she bit her lip and looked away. He might not have been up to Spock’s standard of general knowledge but he knew that Khan had been Indian. It was probably safe to assume he was less likely to get anything useful out of someone like Parvati-

 

Though he could probably find out whether Layla was on board, she might be more helpful considering that he’d done all he could for her children.

 

He was wondering how to ask without looking as if he was obviously trying to escape when Parvati took him by surprise.

 

“I’m sorry for your loss.” She blurted out.

 

She glanced briefly in his direction, winced and tried again. Ffion put her head in her hands.

 

“Uh what I mean is- Well ummm Mahaan wasn’t wrong exactly but he shouldn’t of- All those people and your crew so ummm-”

 

“Tell you what,” Ffion interrupted. “How about you two have your awkward and unnecessary conversation and I go find out if me and Taris can take Melati?”

 

She rose; announcing her challenge in…Jim thought it was probably Spanish. The Brazilian Augment flipped neatly back to her feet. He caught Melati grinning before Ffion leapt at her and the fight began. It was only slightly quieter than its armed equivalent had been.

 

Parvati sighed. “I’m sorry that some of your people died. You, err that is, your Federation, shouldn’t have used us the way you did. But that doesn’t mean it was right to kill anyone.”

 

She didn’t seem insincere and if she was acting she was very very good at it. ‘Better,’ Singh had said ‘at everything’. So Kirk considered and stared, looking for some kind of sign he wasn’t convinced he’d even be able to recognise. Parvati fidgeted and rubbed her hands and eventually Jim broke the silence.

 

“Thanks.” He said wryly. “I thought your people didn’t care about humans dying along the way.”

 

Her shocked expression seemed genuine enough and it probably made more sense to assume she was being honest until proven otherwise than act like a complete cad trying to catch her out. Kirk raised his hands in what he hoped was a placating gesture.

 

“I’m not trying to insult you,” He reassured her. “I’m just going by my experience and what I know from history books.”

 

“Non-violence is the highest virtue.” She murmured as if she was quoting something.

 

“But not all your people believe that,” Kirk pointed out. “Do they?”

 

“Do yours?”

 

He conceded the point and they sat for a while trying to ignore the rather one-sided sparring match in front of them. Then Parvati thanked him for ‘assisting’ Layla’s children, about as awkwardly as she’d apologised for the carnage Singh had left in his wake. Which made it very easy, very natural, to ask after her. And since she was aboard asking to see her was also easy and probably seemed natural enough.

 

Kirk hoped fervently that he was at least half as good at acting as they were because otherwise three days of doubt and second guessing was going to drive him insane.

 

-

 

When Parvati had said Layla would be in her lab Kirk had conjured up an image something like the Enterprise med-bay or failing that an equally sterile place full of samples in cold storage and computer simulations. The room on Deck five, formerly part of the recreation deck if he wasn’t mistaken, looked more like a garden than a lab. The path as they walked in was lined with a tall grass, gradually turning gold under the sun-lamps. It wasn’t wheat, corn or oats and so fell outside Kirk’s knowledge of agriculture. The air smelt of garlic and onion flowers. A crude and battered aeroponics system creaked overhead, rotating tomato plants through an irregular mist. The grass gave way abruptly to rows of wild, dark green bushes with delicate yellow flowers, low enough for them to see the desks in the centre loaded with aquariums and the two people tending them.

 

Layla looked…much the same as she had when they’d last met, which made sense when he thought about it, the intervening time had passed for him but she had been in stasis for most of it. Why should she look any different? A little paler perhaps, from being on a ship all the time, and a little less…rounded which supported the suggestion they were low on basic supplies. He’d half-expected her to give him one of the small, mirthless smiles she’d used on Earth. Instead she shot a brief worried look towards her assistant.

 

So Kirk switched his attention to the young man who seemed to have frozen over one of the tanks. He was a lighter tan than Layla, with curly black hair and a scruffy half-stubble beard which along with his blank, dazed expression helped to give the impression that he’d just recovered from a stunner blast. He didn’t look particularly threatening; he looked like someone who was trying to make himself smaller.

 

Parvati dove forward making Kirk wonder what she was shielding him from.

 

“Ana asifa!” She declared, which wasn’t even a language Kirk recognised but her tone was agitated and that did not bode well.

 

She looked as if she was preparing to expand on her statement but Layla cut her off.

 

“Halas.” She paused, rearranging the top of an aquarium to her liking then turned to her assistant. “Parvati will help you finish feeding them.”

 

She strode round the desks grabbed Kirk by the elbow and practically frog-marched him back down the path. He tried to twist out of her grasp and her hand locked until it felt like he’d need to break a bone to get free.

 

“What the hell are you doing?” He hissed.

 

“Attempting to minimise the fallout from your extremely poor timing.” Layla replied.

 

“Which means?”

 

She glanced behind them, even though the tall grass and the twists in the path hid the central table, its aquariums and the other Augments completely. After a moment she let go of his arm.

 

“Ali doesn’t respond positively to humans.”

 

Another reason, if he’d needed one, to find a way off the ship as soon as possible. It wasn’t particularly surprising though, considering Singh and what they knew of the war.

 

“Thank you.” Kirk said, since it generally paid to be polite to the person helping you, even if they had left a bruise.

 

Layla snorted dismissively. “Don’t. We’re not protecting you.”

 

“No?”

 

“No.” She confirmed. “He is not a violent or aggressive person but-”

 

“He’s a bigot?” Kirk suggested evenly.

 

“But he is prone to catatonia and we lack the means to treat it.” She finished rather sharply. “What do you want Captain?”

 

She was probably the closest thing to someone he could trust on the ship so Jim decided to respond to her directness in kind.

 

“I need to get off this ship and back into Federation space as soon as possible.”

 

Her expression hardened into something that was not quite Singh’s contempt.

 

“Wait three days.”

 

“For Khan to kill me?” Kirk enquired.

 

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Layla snapped.

 

“Yes because thinking that a warlord with a personal grudge against me might want me dead is completely ridiculous.” Kirk replied in a deadpan.

 

She sighed, rubbed the heel of her thumb across her eye as if she was tired.

 

“She can’t kill you Captain.”

 

“Really? Care to explain why?”

 

“Numbers Captain,” Layla murmured. “Numbers.”

 

She didn’t clarify that equally enigmatic statement right away so Kirk waited while Layla scrubbed her hands over her eyes as though this would somehow produce a greater level of wakefulness and a general willingness to be involved in their present conversation.

 

“There are too few of us and everything comes back to that. You seem extremely eager to fight us but we can not fight you. Because there are too few of us. For the same reason we can not afford to fight ourselves. You are alive now Captain because a majority decided you should be and any individual would need an exceptionally good reason to harm you. So unless you plan to try hurting my children-” She trailed off, running her fingers through the grass’ slowly bending heads.

 

“You will be released unharmed in three days.” She concluded.

 

“And you…trust Khan to keep her word on that?” Kirk asked with the sceptical tone of someone who thought he was likely to be released totally unharmed into the vacuum of space.

 

“If she didn’t she might lose control of the ship.” Layla stated simply. “At least nine of us would be generally against the idea and four of those would try to stop such action even if you were Admiral Marcus.”

 

“Care to give me their names?”

 

“Would you trust my answer if I did?” She countered.

 

She let the silence stretch before turning half her attention back to the grass as though she was addressing it instead of the human being in front of her. He caught a glimpse of the smattering of grey hair above her ear and it occurred to him that she was older than the other Augments, that she wasn’t in prime physical condition, that she had children. And he was asking her to stand against a warlord for a man she knew mostly as an image from the news. Perhaps…perhaps it was too much to ask.

 

“You’re not going to help me are you?”

 

Her hand tightened briefly around a frond of grass seeds. It broke off.

 

“If you have real reason to believe that your life is in danger then I will help you leave.” Layla said, slowly.

 

“If your life is threatened I will do what I can to protect it. If you want assistance on this ship or information that will not compromise our lives and freedom, it is yours.” She shrugged. “Will I go needlessly against a decision reached by all of us and a woman who has been nothing but kind towards me because you feel paranoid? No Captain. I will not.”

 

Kirk sighed. So much for allies. She’d given a plausible enough justification for him to settle down and wait, perhaps she even believed it. But Jim wasn’t about to trust his life to Khan’s good will. He’d have to find a way off on his own, preferably after eating something that hadn’t originated in Qo’nos-

 

And in the meantime, if she wasn’t prepared to help him escape-

 

“Where can I find Mahaan Singh?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> General note on marriage- As I understand it in India marriage legislation is treated as a mostly religious matter, if you’re Muslim it follows Islamic tradition, Hindus follow their traditions etc. There have, as a result of different interpretations of Hindu texts, been several lawful lesbian marriages in India. Although some prominent Sikh leaders have made profoundly homophobic comments over the years the Sikh tradition, arguably, allows for gay and straight marriage equally as the actual wording of the marriage vows has always been gender neutral. Historically (Vedic, see Karma Sutra) India has been accepting of the LGBTA spectrum. Recently India has both decriminalised and recriminalised homosexuality. The official position of LGBTA rights appears to be somewhat confused.
> 
> Machete- The weapon is the bladed maculele weapon seen in the Brazilian martial art.   
> Oddly shaped dagger- A katar. A ‘push’ or ‘fist’ dagger from South India. Quite beautiful.  
> Anthropology- Since the word is derived from Greek ‘study of man’ (I think) I considered changing this to something that included other species. But my Greek is non-existent and I wasn’t confident the words I was coming up with fit. ‘Kos’ seemed to suggest space rather than the people that lived there, ‘Xeno’ seemed almost discriminatory. In the end I stuck with traditional bastardised-Greek rather than bastardising my own Greek.   
> Brazil and cartwheels- Capoeira. Brazilian martial art famous for its playful gymnastic style. Invented by societies of escaped slaves.  
> ‘Non-violence is the highest virtue’- Ahimse paramo dharma. Translation from Sanskrit. Several Hindu texts, notably Mahaprasthanika Parva.  
> Wheat, corn, oats- Apparently grown in Iowa. The grass is actually upland rice.  
> Aeroponics- Growing plants without soil, generally by suspending in the air and spraying the roots with a water-nutrient mixture periodically.  
> Dark green bushes- Lentils.   
> Ana asifa- I’m sorry. Arabic.  
> Halas- Literally ‘stop’. Arabic. In this case closer to ‘enough’. Used colloquially in this sense in Saudi.


	5. Chapter 5

 

Engineering, he probably should have guessed that; Singh would have had the most experience with modern technology, Singh would have been the most capable of squeezing Warp seven out of a core designed for Warp five-

 

Singh was close to Khan and if he was going to get any real idea of what they were planning there was a better chance of manipulating it out of Singh than Khan. They were after something, kidnapping him was far too much effort otherwise, revenge was the most obvious motive but it was beginning to seem increasingly unlikely.

 

May be Layla was right, perhaps Khan was out-voted. But he remembered the expression on Singh’s face when he’d clutched Marcus’ head between his hands, the cold steady hiss as he spoke and the horrifying wet crunch as the Admiral’s skull had caved-

 

If they wanted him dead they would find a way.

 

He had expected getting to Engineering might pose a problem but he’d requested the Tour begin again on the deck below and Parvati had asked whether he would like to visit the Impulse deck. Which meant they were probably serious about letting him go anywhere he liked on the ship. He’d have to try getting up to the bridge before he left-

 

He wondered idly who was in the Chair.

 

And then the turbolift stopped just outside Main Engineering and he had a handful of seconds to try and take in the visible modifications that had spilt out into the corridor. Something attached to the pipes that fed the heat-sinks lower down, extensive changes to the door and that…whatever it was, was positioned right below the plasma vent line-

 

They stepped through into Engineering.

 

It should have been familiar, afterall it was a Miranda class the most common ship in the ‘Fleet, they were standard study material for the Academy course. Everyone was trained with the assumption that they’d find themselves on board a Miranda for at least a portion of their career. And heck Jim loved ships, he’d poured over the blueprints, scored top marks in those initial classes, talked his way into a couple before his first posting, he wasn’t an engineer but he _knew_ what the main section of a Miranda class’ Impulse Deck was supposed to look like.

 

The main control panels had been levered open spilling a network of wires over the floor in a way that was definitely against safety regulations. They wound up the walls to structures bolted at regular intervals above and across to the core which-

 

Kirk took a moment to recall the lecture Scotty had given him just before he’d resigned over those damned torpedoes and the whole mess had kicked off in earnest. The warp core was a radioactive catastrophe waiting to happen. Which didn’t make seeing god-alone-knew-what welded to the side of the damn thing particularly comforting. And in the centre of the chaos was Singh.

 

He seemed as rigid, cold and unaffected as he had been in the Enterprise’s cell. He turned slightly and Parvati stopped dead even though his expression was as blank as it had been a moment before.

 

“Captain.” He acknowledged briefly.

 

“Mister Singh.”

 

Kirk noticed Parvati stiffen beside him and he felt a little bit guilty for putting her in this situation. She’d probably be in trouble and he couldn’t imagine Khan or Singh going soft on their crew. He stepped away, towards one of the gutted control panels as though he was examining their adjustments. She didn’t move to stop him and neither did Singh. Perhaps they knew he didn’t have enough training to make heads or tails of what they’d done. Or maybe they just thought a human wouldn’t be smart enough to work it out.

 

He turned making a show of examining the wiring creeping up the walls and contraptions they led to before shifting his attention back to the warp core.

 

He let out a long, low whistle.

 

“Nice ship you’ve stolen here ‘Khan’.”

 

The bastard didn't so much as flinch. Not that Kirk had exactly been expecting him to, but some sort of response would have been...helpful. May be he'd started out too soft? Or perhaps Singh wasn't quite as susceptible as the Admiralty to Kirk's natural ability to infuriate-

 

“Little ironic that she's called _'Botany Bay'_ -“

 

“We renamed him ‘ _Mirza Sahiba_ ’.” Singh informed him without looking up from his work. “I don’t expect you to understand the reference.”

 

His voice was perfectly level, but it had been when he’d been describing a year of imprisonment from the Enterprise brig. Kirk couldn’t even tell if it was any sharper than normal. So he figured he might as well push.

 

“Doesn't handle as well as the _Vengence_ does she?” He observed conversationally.

 

“I mean you've obviously been trying,” Kirk continued gesturing to the mangled walls. “But she only just makes Warp seven and that has got to be eating into the power your drive is generating. You probably can't keep a decent shield up at top speed.” He mused.

 

He paused for a moment but Singh didn't seem inclined to interrupt. Even if his hands were clenched a little tightly on the edge of the control panel. Kirk allowed himself a small, satisfied smile.

 

“You see Singh,” Kirk went on, leaning casually against the piece of panelling that looked least like it had been attacked with a crowbar. “It doesn’t matter how smart you are, you’re three hundred years out of date in a clapped out stolen wreck with no resources and less than a hundred people. The Federation has more _planets_ than you’ve got people. We have the money and the manpower to build dozens more like the _Vengence_ and improve on it. You’re outnumbered, outgunned and-”

 

“Stop it!” Parvati yelled, so he did.

 

He waited; watching Singh intently for whatever sign it was his crew member had seen. He was as inexpressive as a Vulcan, blank. The only tell Jim could see was the force of his grip but he was sure he’d seen that before the little speech so he went back to searching Singh’s face. Which was when he noticed that the Augment wasn’t looking at him but past-

 

Kirk turned. Parvati was to his right, her eyes red and when he glanced back at Singh the man had gone from dispassionate to livid.

 

Singh strode towards him. And it was intimidating even without knowing what they could do; the urge was to do the sensible thing to back off, to run. Kirk did what he usually did when he felt that urge: planted his feet.

 

The Augment reached, the movement was too slow, deliberately slow, for a punch and clamped a hand on Jim’s shoulder. Kirk let himself be turned around and steered away. It was almost like being a teenager again, when being dragged out of some dangerous dive had been a weekly occurrence. The bouncers and police had been impersonal most of the time, they might have been rough getting him moving but any real violence was beneath the surface. A hand on his shoulder a little too tight as a reminder of what might happen if he stepped out of line-

 

And as satisfying as hitting Singh would have been it wouldn’t have got him anywhere, except back in their cell.

 

So he walked out of Engineering without protest. Allowed the hand that was just a little too tight on his shoulder to guide him down the corridor and back to the turbolift. He waited until the doors slid closed on them both before he opened his mouth.

 

“It’s already started you know,” Kirk informed Singh conversationally. “Even if you’d done a better job of destroying the _Vengence_ all her information was on file. And the Federation doesn’t need a war with the Klingons to justify building them when _you’re_ walking around free. Not after San Francisco.”

 

Nothing. Not a sound and when Jim twisted to look at him the man’s face was set in the same emotionless mask-

 

“We are going to _hunt you down_.” Kirk told him and his voice was coming out too harsh, too raw, too angry but he’d had enough of seeing that cold, dispassionate expression, enough of not knowing how he fit into this mass-murderer’s twisted plans-

 

“You think you’re safe out here on the edge of space? You’re _not_. Because you can’t go into uncharted territory for the same reason you can’t start a fight: there aren’t enough of you and you _can’t take the risk_ -”

 

Still nothing. Even Spock would have raised an eyebrow by now or tried to choke the life out of him and Jim knew he should rein it in, change tact, be smart, concentrate on getting the information the Federation would need but-

 

But there was Pike, ripped open and dying, the archive in London and the people who’d been passing by on the street outside. Every member of _his_ crew that had been torn out into space, that had burnt, that had fried, that had broken bones, bled out. Every ordinary person in San Francisco who hadn’t come home one day.

 

And this wasn’t the same as punching the man responsible, but it felt like the next best thing.

 

“We’ve got people everywhere.” Kirk snarled. “And we will find you, we will track you down and you will spend the rest of your goddamn life in our cells for what you did.”

 

And nothing. The doors to the turbolift slid neatly open, just across from their kitchen. The hand on his shoulder shoved him forward and still _nothing-_

 

“Say something.” Kirk snapped. “Say _something_ dammit!”

 

“Congratulations Captain, you managed to upset an eighteen year old girl.”

 

The next shove was harder and sent him stumbling into the kitchen. Jim straightened, patted himself down and tried to silence all the voices in his head that sounded even remotely like Spock.

 

He waited for a hand to grasp his shoulder again and it didn’t. A quick glance behind him showed that the corridor was empty. Singh was gone. He wasn’t sure if that meant a defeat or a victory.

 

It definitely meant he wasn’t alone because Singh wouldn’t have left him an opening like that.

 

A more attentive check and he spotted the Augment, a short man with light brown skin and a well groomed beard, sitting quietly in a corner.

 

Kirk raised a hand. “Hi.”

 

“Salaam.” The Augment replied.

 

Jim wondered how much of that argument he’d heard and whether this would be any less awkward if he hadn’t just lost it because of a three-hundred-year-old frozen man. Ex-frozen man. Man-who-really-should-have-remained-frozen-

 

God he needed a drink.

 

Kirk pasted on another charming smile. The Augment appeared apathetic and a little glazed, perhaps he’d been sampling Ffion’s moonshine-

 

“So-”

 

“Tell me who you would like to watch you,” He said, cutting off Jim’s attempt at conversation. “And I will take you to them.”

 

It threw him for a moment, a blunt rejection when the rest of the crew had been-

 

Kirk shifted his focus forcefully to trying to figure out who would be the laxest guard. Layla had already made her position clear. He barely knew any of the others but Ffion had seemed- Then again he had just upset her wife.

 

“Grisha?”

 

-

 

The turbolift lurched all the way up, making it pretty damn obvious where they were going. They’d have to be working in shifts, of course. He tried to work out how few people they could get away with having on the bridge. They’d been trading, or at least negotiating, as well as fighting, so they’d have someone on the coms. Khan or her acting captain, the pilot obviously, a navigator, perhaps someone to man the transporter. Five or six people.

 

He wondered whether Grisha was the sort of man who could be trusted on the com, Kirk certainly wouldn’t have wanted him in the Chair but then-

 

He didn’t really know them, any of them. What he thought he knew was illusionary, probably. Trying to pick apart which of their responses were real and which were crafted for his benefit would be a distraction. A waste of time and energy better spent trying to see as much of the ship and crew as possible and remember it. Kirk sighed.

 

Marcus’ people would have kept notes on Singh during the year they had him. Jim had never seen them, the damn things were probably all kinds of classified, but they’d exist. Admiral Marcus had been too clever, too competent, for them not to. So Star Fleet would at least have something to compare his observations to-

 

The doors slid open and Kirk’s thought process juddered to a halt.

 

Which was stupid, Jim told himself firmly, because they’d changed every other part of the ship he’d seen so far why wouldn’t they modify the Bridge?

 

He took a deep breath, closed his mouth and took a moment to look past the obvious at the _other_ modifications. The viewscreen was in place and appeared standard. No science station and no engineering, but there was a large, sectioned screen on the starboard side which might have done the same job. Ops and environmental seemed to have merged, unmanned but that was practically standard for normal flight. Tactical, or what remained of it, seemed to have been wired into Coms. Navigation had, naturally, been attached to Flight Control, the only chair that seemed to be actively manned-

 

They had- They had uprooted all the command stations. The Chair was…gone.

 

It left a gapping hole in the middle of the bridge. They’d set up a ring of low cushions on the spot, similar to the ones in the mess hall. It reminded Jim briefly of gauze plugging a wound. The centre of the ship, her nervous system torn out-

 

There were three of them sitting where the Chair should be, Grisha and Melati, a tan woman sitting with them and the dark almost ebony woman at the Con. They looked up when he came in, Grisha smiled.

 

“Hey, d’you know how to play Sparrow?”

 

“Sparrow?” Jim echoed, it sounded less ridiculous out loud than he’d thought it would-

 

“We need a fourth.” Grisha offered gesturing to the gap in their semi-circle round Command.

 

There were tiles on the floor between them, like dominos. Some of them were scattered, blank side up, some stood in neat lines in front of the players and the rest were piled in a sort of three-sided wall like a half-constructed fort.

 

“You mean Mah Jong.” Jim murmured.

 

Another game of strategy and luck – he wondered what that meant. Other than that Khan’s crew had too much time on their hands.

 

“Do any of you do any work?”

 

He regretted it as soon as he’d said it, too direct and he’d sounded too…honest. May be it was the way they’d turned everything on board upside down; it had to be because he was sure Singh hadn’t gotten that far under his skin. They’d got him off balance and-

 

Grisha laughed. Melati hid a smile behind her hand and the woman opposite her glanced guiltily towards the Con.

 

“Some of us,” The woman at the Con announced primly. “Are more attentive to our duties than others.”

 

“Oh give it a rest,” The woman sighed as Kirk sank into place.

 

He shifted awkwardly, the cushions were too low, while Grisha demolished the walls and Melati began to shuffle and reorder the tiles.

 

“We’re in the middle of nowhere,” Grisha observed. “I don’t think we’re going to be hailed or shot at in the immediate future.”

 

“That is not the point-” The woman at the Con protested.

 

“Which version do you prefer playing Captain?” Melati interrupted sending him a perfect hostess’ smile. “American? Western? Cantonese?”

 

“Japanese.” Kirk replied.

 

“We won’t be gambling,” She continued. “Does that suit you, Captain?”

 

Kirk managed something close to his usual charming smile.

 

“I don’t have anything to bet with so I’d be missing out if we were.”

 

“That has never stopped him.” The woman at the Con muttered, flicking a finger in Grisha’s general direction.

 

“Have you met my companions, Captain?” Melati asked, forcing the conversation away from their disagreements.

 

“Only Grisha.” Kirk admitted.

 

“Leah, Israel, Class four.” The woman Kirk suspected should have been manning the Coms said.

 

“Akosua, Ghana, Class three.” The woman at the Con told him grudgingly.

 

“And you’re Melati.” Jim interrupted with a grin.

 

“Yes,” She confirmed with a nod that seemed oddly shy. “Indonesia. Class four.”

 

Grisha divided up the wall, sliding blocks to each player with a poker dealer’s smirk. Jim examined his tiles. He tried to remember how long it had been since he had played, the basics were easy enough to remember and he thought he could recall most of the special hands-

 

Kirk took a moment to carefully disorganise his hand because it gave the handy impression he was thinking about the game instead of trying to steady himself.

 

Did they have a colony somewhere? There were plenty of unclaimed M class planets logged in Federation databases, so long as it wasn’t unusual mineral rich and was out of the way a small settlement could go unnoticed for years, may be decades. It was certainly the most sensible thing to do but if they were running into Klingons on a semi-regular basis then they couldn’t all be confined to a planet. Which didn’t make sense, not if they thought they couldn’t afford to lose a single person, Layla had implied they couldn’t even afford to disagree and space was…dangerous.

 

Even without Klingon interference, even though clapped out old Mirandas were reliable, something as simple as a faulty seal on an air lock, a nano-scale fracture in a shield at warp, a flaw in the water recycling system could kill the whole crew. So why have anyone in space at all? What was worth risking their lives for in Vulcan space? What the hell did they think they could get out of him or the Federation for that matter?

 

He drew a tile without looking at it and discarded one at random. Why would they put children on the ship when drawing the Federation’s attention like this was such a risk? Had it been to unsettle him? To knock him off balance from the moment he woke and saw who was guarding him. A sort of subtle threat implied by the fact they thought an Augment child could handle him-

 

Kirk was debating whether to ask Layla about the risk outright when Melati interrupted his thoughts. He had to ask her to repeat herself and tried to pretend he’d been absorbed in his hand.

 

She asked if he was interested in martial arts and when Kirk didn’t respond quickly gave a faltering explanation of how absorbed he’d seemed in the gym. Jim asked some vague questions which drew him gradually into a conversation well beyond his area of expertise. He _had_ done a little judo as a kid and a fair amount of karate but he’d learnt more about fighting from scuffles back home than he ever had in a dojo. He dredged up what he could remember while she talked about silat and kalaripayattu.

 

Grisha yawned and Leah cut in to ‘rescue’ him from what might otherwise have been a long discussion of Melati’s hobby.

 

They talked about Klingon music and Romulan food, different ship designs and the games started to pass more easily. Jim told himself that he was tired, that trying to continually pry information from them and remember every small detail was exhausting.

 

So he put it all out of his mind for the moment, second guessing and trying to figure out what the hell Khan and Singh were up to. Their crew might not even know-

 

They played Mah Jong and their conversation roamed, naturally avoiding politics.

 

After perhaps an hour Leah brought out some red fritters which Akosua called ‘koose’ and Leah called ‘akara’. They shared them out.

 

The break made it harder to ignore the way they teased and joked with each other. The pilot implied that the rest of them were lazy and Grisha responded by accusing her of using the ships computer for the kind of pointless mathematics only academics would waste time with. Leah asked Melati about someone called Qiran in a tone that had the Indonesian woman blushing from ear to ear and protesting that they were _friends_ before the Israeli Augment had even finished her question.

 

It was…ordinary. They could have been recent additions to his crew, which wasn’t a thought Jim wanted to follow through.

 

So he threw himself back into the game instead and found that the Bridge didn’t have a direct line to Engineering or the transporters anymore and learnt a few words of Romunlan from Grisha. Perhaps their greetings were distinct enough across the dialects for Uhura to narrow down who they’d had contact with-

 

It worked for a while. Then the conversation turned to literature and he found himself defending Moby Dick from Grisha’s claim that it was the second dullest book ever written. They argued over Scott Fitzgerald and Dickens, agreed on Dumas and slandered Hugo. Jim tried not to compare it to debates he’d had with Sulu on the same subject. Then Grisha started talking about Tolstoy and he thought of Chekov’s vocal pride in his country and-

 

They played until Akosua relinquished the Con to Melati hours later. Leah began to pack away the tiles and a slim Chinese woman slipped past to take her place on the Coms. Grisha caught his eye over the gap where the Chair should have been and gestured towards the door.

 

Jim shrugged and rose. There wasn’t much point in trying to stay, he probably wouldn’t be welcome if the rest of them were leaving and he had a decent idea of what they’d done to the _Botany Bay_. A boarding party could probably take the ship easily, so long as they could get to the bridge-

 

He followed Grisha out and into the turbolift wondering how much they could have changed the shielding system and whether it was possible to adjust phaser stun blasts so they’d do more to an Augment than aggravate them.

 

“Did you ever finish that tour?” Grisha asked.

 

“No.” Kirk admitted. “I only got as far as Engineering.”

 

“Would you like to? Finish it I mean.”

 

He smiled rather than smirked and yes it was endearing and perhaps if the circumstances had been different-

 

“Actually I’m quite tired.”

 

“Oh. Okay.” He sounded a little disappointed. “Did you want to go back to your room?”

 

‘Room’ not cell Kirk noticed, was that a bizarre form of courtesy or was Grisha more comfortable thinking of him as a guest instead of a prisoner?

 

“If you don’t mind.” Jim replied.

 

Grisha murmured something in what sounded like Chinese. The lift shifted and in a moment they were back on Deck six walking past Ffion’s workshop and the archives to the single modified room with a bench just outside.

 

The barrier was still down leaving the room open and exposed. Jim stopped just before the threshold. Grisha stopped a pace behind by the controls. It was strange when Kirk thought about it, that stepping into their cell should feel like he was losing something when he was just as trapped on their ship as he would be in the cell.

 

“Well…goodnight.” The Augment murmured with a shrug.

 

“Goodnight.”

 

He stepped across the threshold and heard the barrier slide shut behind him.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mirza Sahiba- A classical tragic love story from the Punjab. The names are the male and female lead respectively.  
> Salaam- Shortening of ‘Salaam alaykum’. Arabic. Literally ‘Gods peace.’ A greeting.  
> Sparrow- Mah Jong. Arguably a literal translation.   
> Mah Jong terms- The tiles at the beginning of the game are stacked in ‘walls’ post shuffling. The hand is dealt from the wall. Most winning hands consist of groups of the same tile, or consecutive tiles (1, 2, 3 and 4 of the same suit). Special hands are neither and vary depending on which variant you’re playing. They’re high scoring and harder to get, equivalent to a royal flush.  
> Martial arts- Kirk’s ‘fighting style’ isn’t really any martial art. The Trek wiki points the blame at Judo and Shatner has a karate black belt.   
> Silat- Umbrella term for martial arts from South East Asia. See ‘The Raid’. No seriously go see it.  
> Kalaripayattu- Indian martial art from the south.   
> Koose/Akara- Fried bean fritters made with palm oil. Common snack in Nigeria, parts of Brazil and parts of Ghana. The names are Ghanaian and Nigerian respectively.


	6. Chapter 6

 

Kirk lay awake the next morning trying to remember the names of everyone who’d been injured in Thule and Harar. There had been forty three and he was six names short.

 

Eventually he gave up and went through as much of his usual morning routine as he could. He tried to ignore the guard on the bench outside, she didn’t seem to be paying much attention to him anyway.

 

She’d let him out if he asked but could he get away from her? He knew where he was and the lay out of a Miranda, he might know the ships schematics better than she did. They had reprogramed the turbolifts and he wasn’t sure whether they’d just made them respond to more languages or coded each floor to a different one. The ship was barely crewed so if he could lose her unreliable turbolifts might not be so problematic. Of course the main hanger for a Miranda was past Engineering and given how well his last fist fight with Singh had gone-

 

And he was assuming they hadn’t converted the hanger into something else.

 

Kirk sighed. They probably didn’t want him dead. They probably didn’t want to keep him prisoner for long either, not when they were low on basic supplies. Two days…

 

He could find out a lot in two days.

 

He silently went over what he knew about the crew again, partly to make sure he remembered and partly so that he could justify what he’d already decided to do. Assuming he actually left alive and there was someone to justify it to.

 

The Captain always knew what went on their ship. They knew the ship, her quirks and character, the fastest way around when the turbolifts malfunctioned and the right place to hit the consoles. They knew the crew, their mood, their problems. They knew the course they all flew and the plans to the letter.

 

He’d tell his superiors he’d gone to Singh first, that he’d tried to use their shared history to his advantage. The Admiralty probably didn’t need all the details on why it had failed. But since it had failed he was going to try Khan.

 

He rapped on the cell door and once she’d let him out asked his guard where he could find her Captain. She gave him an odd, searching look which made Kirk wonder whether she’d refuse to take him and he’d have to try something more circumspect. Then she shrugged, told him that Khan was on deck four and guided him towards the nearest turbolift.

 

-

 

The room she led him into had been someone’s quarters once. A junior officer probably.

 

Now it looked like a council chamber, a relatively normal one, a little smaller and sparser than Federation standards but-

 

They all turned as he came in, stared. It looked very much like he had interrupted some sort of official meeting. Probably an important one if it warranted having five of the crew present. No six, one of the boys Kit, was perched between Layla and Yosef. Which suggested it wasn't...but then given Layla's area of expertise and their low population-

 

They might have been talking about making more Augments.

 

Kirk grinned and Khan returned his smile.

 

"Captain, what a surprise,” She didn’t sound surprised at all. “What can I do for you?”

 

“Nothing.” Kirk replied.

 

He pulled his smile wider, hoping it looked close to his usual confidence, to the expression that made the Admirals _miserable_. Then he grabbed a spare chair and joined their little council.

 

Khan stopped smiling.

 

He had a moment to appreciate that he had affected her, had the upper hand however briefly, then the room exploded into argument.

 

Yosef started it, then the girl on his left cut in, the Indian man opposite interrupted her and then they were all shouting in what sounded like entirely different languages. Kit shrank back from the table. His mother scrubbed a hand across her face and glanced at Khan.

 

Khan shrugged and Layla grimaced.

 

“Halas.” Layla grumbled and the debate faltered.

 

Khan raised a hand for silence and it stopped.

 

“I take it you intend to stay then Captain?” She asked.

 

“You said I could go anywhere I liked.” Kirk pointed out nonchalantly.

 

She smirked. “I did.”

 

It made Kirk wonder if he’d just scored a point and whether it counted if she’d noticed enough to acknowledge it.

 

“Very well Captain, if you wish you may stay.” Khan concluded.

 

Yosef began to, well the tone sounded like a protest and Khan spoke over him.

 

“You may stay and the remainder of the discussion will be in English for your benefit. That is your preferred language? Excellent. You have met Layla and Kit?”

 

“Yes-” Kirk confirmed.

 

“Yosef, Onyeka, Salman. Of Ethiopia, Nigeria and India respectively.” Khan introduced economically. “Christopher would you please summarise the basic points of discussion for the Captain.”

 

Kit fidgeted and picked at the hem of his shorts.

 

“Em- er Yosef,” The boy corrected. “Thinks we should make chimeras so that we can get yams and ginger and onions and stuff from the lycopersicum and the sativa. And may be have oleracea leaves on the culinaris only that would be horrible if it didn’t work properly and may be also if it did.”

 

Kirk blinked and tried to run the whole thing through his mind again while keeping up with whatever else the kid was saying. He was talking more quickly as he went, which didn’t help. Neither did the, was it Latin? He’d mentioned vegetables but he’d also said something about a chimera which Kirk was certain was a monster from Greek mythology.

 

“Only Ma says it won’t work cos of the energy cost to the organism.” Kit continued. “But Onyeka thinks we can may be use new nitrate mixes to improve yield but Masiji- umm Khan says we don’t have enough air to use it like that. And Baba, Salman, thinks we should convert more labs like Ma’s only Yosef says we don’t have enough materials and Onyeka says that would _definitely_ do something to the air and also they wouldn’t grow right cos we couldn’t give them enough nutrients.”

 

Khan leant across the table to give Jim a closer view of her happy, patronising smile. “Do you have any opinion on the matter Captain?”

 

“I-”

 

“I think,” Kit interrupted, extremely serious. “We should do what Thema says and specialise each ship.”

 

“That runs the risk of destroying our food supply if we lose a single ship.” Yosef pointed out.

 

“And you don’t like Thema.” Onyeka observed in a bored tone.

 

“Which has nothing to do with the matter at hand.” Yosef protested. “Unless I misunderstood Fleet wide policy is not what we are supposed to be discussing-”

 

“Aside from Borlaug’s dwarf variants is there another simple method of reducing the organisms’ energy requirements?” Salman asked Layla.

 

For the next ten minutes they talked about leaves, which convinced Kirk that, firstly, they were talking about some sort of farming after all and secondly, the chances of him finding anything useful were slim to none. It was difficult to follow and tedious. He should probably have left but Khan was still smiling across at him occasionally, waiting for him to cave and slink away.

 

So he sat there stubbornly while they talked about chlorophyll concentrations, radiation, excitation wavelengths, nitrate uptake, water supply contamination, genetics, aerophonics and slowly drove him closer to death by extreme and unnecessary boredom. The entire thing lasted around three hours and if they’d come to any decisions they weren’t clear to Jim.

 

There wasn’t a clear sign that the meeting was over, the debate wound down on its own and the Augments gradually dispersed.

 

When Khan rose Kirk did too. When she left he followed.

 

She headed for the nearest turbolift, giving Kirk another bemused smile as if she’d only just noticed him.

 

“Do you intend to be my shadow for the rest of the day Captain?”

 

Jim gave her a noncommittal shrug and a smile of his own. She seemed more amused than annoyed.

 

“Very well, if you insist. Do you know what langar is Captain?”

 

-

 

She led him to the kitchen, probably avoiding real duties so that he wouldn’t overhear anything Kirk surmised. He’d expected something of the sort. He hadn’t expected Khan to head straight for the galley and present him with three cups, a bottle of oil and a bag of flour.

 

“This much flour,” She instructed heaping a measure out and forming a well in its centre with the back of her fist. “This much oil, this much water. Knead the oil in before adding the water. Then knead it again. Twenty should be sufficient.”

 

Jim stared at the flour. Even if it wasn’t self raising and there was no proving time it was going to take a while. He could refuse but then he’d have more trouble getting her talking-

 

And he had no idea how he was going to explain to his superiors that he’d spent a significant period of time on an enemy ship _baking_.

 

“Do you know how to knead dough?” Khan asked, from her tone she probably thought he didn’t have a clue.

 

Which made sticking his hands into the oily, floury mess a lot more satisfying. If it surprised her she didn’t show it and she didn’t comment.

 

“You make bread often?” He asked as she started measuring lentils into a pan.

 

“Yes.” She replied simply.

 

“I’d have thought you’d have made one of the crew do the cooking.” Jim observed.

 

Khan snorted. “A quarter of the ‘crew’ are my family, Captain, many of the rest are my friends. They are not servants.”

 

“I didn’t mean to imply they were.” Kirk replied.

 

Which seemed to mollify her. He noticed her shoulders sink a little and the way she moved seemed less…abrupt. Kirk was reasonably happy to conclude that she was at least marginally less annoyed. Even if Spock had apparently rubbed off on him enough for a part of his brain to be pointing out how illogical that conclusion was.

 

Kirk ignored it and tried to come up with a decent line of enquiry while Khan Noonien Kaur set about boiling enough lentils for twenty.

 

He wondered if all ‘Fleet Captains found themselves in situations this surreal or if he was just unlucky-

 

“Layla said you were sterile-” He began.

 

“Mmmm. And?”

 

“Well you said they were your family.” Kirk pointed out. “The crew.”

 

“I was raised with the other Indian class threes and my husband was raised with the other Augments produced by his country regardless of class.”

 

Her tone was matter of fact, almost military. Her crew might have been looking at him as a guest, someone to chat to and play games with but she was looking at him as a prisoner.

 

Or the enemy.

 

“Class three?” Kirk asked innocently, even though it was probably too early to expect her to reveal the details of their ranks.

 

“Augments between the ages of twenty eight and thirty three.” Khan explained.

 

“It’s your age?” He blurted which probably made him look like an utter idiot but that was something he could work with later.

 

She gave him a small smile. “Yes Captain. What did you think it meant?”

 

“Rank.” He admitted.

 

“We’re Augments, Kirk. We don’t _have_ ranks.”

 

It might have been the first time she hadn’t called him ‘Captain’ which was interesting. Perhaps they thought that all Augments were equal and only mere humans could be classed below them.

 

“Why do you introduce yourselves with your age?”

 

She shrugged. “It is a shorthand version of our serial numbers. Name, Country, and Class. Khan, India, Class Three. I could tell you the entire thing if you wish, but it is a hundred and fifty three characters long.”

 

“I’ll pass.” Kirk informed her.

 

“Wise.”

 

She turned back to the lentils and started skimming scum off the top of the liquor. Jim put aside his first loaf and started measuring out flour for the next one. The class fours were probably eighteen to twenty three and-

 

And Khan had said she was raised with the other Indian Augments and she hadn’t seemed this tense when she’d let him out of that cell.

 

Kirk came to a conclusion and winced.

 

“Are you annoyed with me because I upset your little sister?”

 

“Yes.” She replied bluntly. “And I’m afraid that attempting to start a fight with my husband at the time does not count in your favour.”

 

“I didn’t expect it would.” Jim admitted. “Are you close to her?”

 

She paused and he wondered again whether he’d pushed too far. He was hardly being subtle and it didn’t take a genius to see the tactical advantage in knowing more about Khan’s family.

 

“I raised her.” She answered eventually.

 

She caught sight of his expression and smiled. “Does that surprise you?”

 

It did. The pretty girl who’d offered condolences for all the lives Singh had taken seemed difficult to square with what he knew about the Eugenics Wars, about the Khan Noonien ‘Singh’ from the history books. About her husband.

 

Kirk opted for the most diplomatic of the responses which sprang to mind.

 

“You uh don’t strike me as the maternal type.”

 

“I’m her sister not her mother.”

 

“Of course.” Kirk replied because everything about Khan’s tone suggested he’d brushed a nerve he’d regret stamping on.

 

If she was anything like her husband then aggravating her would be counterproductive. What he needed was context. Because the chances were good that they were all giving things away, things that would probably be useful to the Federation. But he hadn’t lived in India three hundred years ago and a few weeks covering the Eugenics Wars at school could never have bridged the gap. He _had_ read up on it after Layla and again after they’d stolen the Botany Bay.

 

He hadn’t realised just how much of their knowledge of that period had been guesswork before he’d set out to find out just what he was facing. The surviving records from the time were abysmal and the accounts afterwards, from the survivors who’d pieced the planet and civilisation back together, read more like legend or hear-say than reality.

 

He wished that he’d made the time to read around the subject a little more. That he’d found something from the time that had talked about how they thought rather than what they’d destroyed.

 

He put aside his third loaf and thought about Earth before the Federation. When countries had still been important and the world had been smaller, full of petty injustices. Before gender had ceased to be a barrier and race had been a form of identity rather than an aesthetic observation. When the colour of your skin or your choice of lover could still be a death sentence-

 

They didn’t seem to separate themselves in any way, by sex or colour. At least not that Kirk could tell. But they introduced themselves with their country, stood by it even now, which suggested they might still hold on to some of those ideas.

 

But then again-

 

“Your sister,” Kirk began. “Parvati, she married young-”

 

“She did.” Khan agreed.

 

“And was that…a problem?” Kirk asked when he couldn’t think of a better way to phrase it.

 

“At first.” Khan admitted. “But eventually we had to accept that she had fallen in love with someone from Britain.”

 

He wasn’t entirely sure if that was a joke.

 

Together with their countries, which seemed to cover a fair amount of the Earth, it could suggest a more…enlightened attitude than their contemporaries. Or it could mean they thought such distinctions petty compared to the differences between humans and Augments.

 

He wished he could ask for Uhura’s opinion.

 

A movement caught his eye. Kirk turned and found Khan drawing a knife-

 

He felt himself tense, thought of Qo’Nos and the damage he’d seen Singh do with a blade.

 

Khan started slicing onions.

 

He took a steadying breath and put a little more force into kneading than he really needed to. She was no more likely to kill him now than she had been yesterday. Layla seemed to think he was safe which might have been wishful thinking but if they killed him-

 

If they killed him then the Federation would put more effort into hunting them down and whatever alliances they’d cultivated, however much they’d improved the ships they’d stolen, they were a handful of planet-based soldiers against the greatest space fleet in existence.

 

“Why are you armed?” Kirk asked when he was sure he could do it calmly.

 

“I’m a Sikh.” She replied as though that made it clear. “I wear a kirpan.”

 

“A kirpan?” He repeated.

 

“Well not precisely,” Khan admitted waving the short, straight blade in a way that might have been for emphasis or to give Jim a better look. “A traditional kirpan is curved, whereas this is Irangi manufacture. It was a gift.”

 

“And what exactly is a kirpan?”

 

She glanced up giving Jim an assessing look. “An article of faith.”

 

“Your religion _requires_ you to carry a knife?” It seemed…insane.

 

“Yes,” Khan confirmed. “Since the time of Guru Gobind Singh, if it interests you-”

 

“Why?”

 

Khan sighed. “It is intended to remind the wearer that we must defend the persecuted and oppressed.”

 

Kirk smiled despite himself. “Really?”

 

“Do you really want to discuss _theology_ Captain?” She responded, returning his smile. “Because I’m afraid I’m not the best person for that particular debate. You may want to try Hakim or Yosef. Or my husband if you’re feeling masochistic. I am more of a…lay person.”

 

“Is that why you’re using a symbol of your faith as a kitchen knife?”

 

Khan shrugged. “We’re a practical people.”

 

Because practical was clearly the best description for someone who thought freezing the last members of her species and putting them in a ship that wasn’t even Warp capable was a good idea.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thule- Military base in Greenland used in Revival  
> Em- Literally ‘uncle’. An informal title given to a man, indicates a measure of respect/politeness. Arabic. Transcribed to roman alphabet by the author for which read ‘poorly’.  
> Chimera-An individual with different genetic material in different cells. Most commonly (in humans) something like Turner’s syndrome where a chromosome is present in some cells but not others.  
> S. lycopersicum- Tomatoes.  
> O. sativa- Asian rice.  
> S. oleracea- Spinach.  
> L. culinaris- Lentils.  
> Chimera-Also a monster from Greek mythology, a lion with the head of a goat and a snake for a tail.   
> Baba- Grandfather, Hindi.  
> Borlaug- Norman Borlaug, American biologist who played a large part in the recent development of agriculture (‘Green Revolution’). Credited with saving at least a billion people from starvation.  
> Langar- Communal kitchen traditional in Sikhism providing free food to any visitors to a Sikh temple regardless of background and faith.  
> Servants- In India and many Middle Eastern countries it’s common for reasonably well off families to have some servants, generally cooks and cleaners who may or may not live with the family.   
> Kirpan- One of the ‘Five Ks’. A ceremonial dagger that devout Sikhs are required to wear, to remind them of their duty to protect others.   
> Irangi or Rangi- An ethnic group from Tanzania. In the author’s opinion they make good, practical knives.  
> Guru Gobind Singh- The tenth Sikh Guru. 1666-1708  
> Lentil porridge- Tarka dhal.


	7. Chapter 7

 

There wasn’t any clear sign that the meal was beginning and people began to drift in some time before they’d finished cooking. It made him wonder if they were, actually, as unregimented as they appeared, or if they were just keeping track of their shifts in a rather oblique way.

 

He noticed Yosef setting one of the low tables with a collection of mismatched bowls, plates and glasses before Khan shooed him out into the galley proper. Which probably counted as an official dismissal from the kitchens.

 

He chose a spot halfway down the table and settled in to watch them. The Augments clustered in a couple of loose groups chatting in what sounded like four different dialects. A few of them broke off occasionally to help with the meal, the loaves Kirk had made had come out wide, flat and a little burnt on the top. What Khan eventually poured out into serving bowls appeared to be a sort of lentil porridge and enough rice to bury someone alive. It was all laid out along the table so that everything was within more or less arms reach of every place, a few smaller of pots of worryingly red slop interspersed between them.

 

And, still talking, laughing, groaning, the crew sat around him.

 

Not quite the entire crew, but a quick count revealed it was near enough. All of the children, nine of the proper Augments- And he’d met all but two of them and found he knew most of their names.

 

Assuming they hadn’t lied to him about the number of people on board of course.

 

The background noise stopped abruptly when everyone was seated, giving Kirk an uncomfortable moment to wonder why-

 

Then several of them started saying grace.

 

At least, that’s what he assumed it was, none of them used English and he suspected they were all using different languages again. In fact watching them they could easily have been different faiths. Mahaan bowed his head, murmuring something inaudible while Taris’ was almost like song. Yosef moved his hand from one shoulder to the other. Melati held hers apart, Leah held hers together.

 

There was no pause when the prayers ended, conversations started up again seamlessly around him as people helped themselves and-

 

That was when he noticed that there wasn’t any cutlery.

 

He glanced around the table quickly but the only spoons seemed to be the ladles in the serving bowls. The Augments around him were all eating with their fingers, neatly curling the lentils into balls of rice or torn strips of bread as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

 

Kirk studied this technique as he served himself and came to the conclusion that trying to replicate it would probably end with him having to pick rice out of his ear. He fidgeted, looked round the table and caught Khan’s eye. She frowned at him briefly and flicked through a few of their home-signs with her free hand, presumably because that way she could continue her conversation-

 

One of the children, Lan, rose and wandered towards the kitchen, holding her bowl. The person next to him shifted making a space that Lan dropped neatly into when she came back. She handed him a fork and a spoon which didn’t match.

 

“Thank you.”

 

“You’re welcome Captain.” The girl replied.

 

He took a tentative spoonful of the porridge. It was, thankfully, a lot better than the Klingon fungus.

 

He tried to pay attention to them, to see if he could get a sense of what they might be talking about from body language and expressions but it was nearly impossible. Most of them seemed to be having normal conversations, although Melati was apparently harassing Khan about something.

 

He tried to concentrate on the language again, to work out what it was but-

 

He caught the occasional English word or name and a smattering of Klingon he recognised. But otherwise it was a jumbled, mix of sounds, odd inflections and rhythms. Had there been more languages in their time? Jim couldn’t remember.

 

He almost wanted to think that it was important, that they were cutting him out because this was something they didn’t want him to understand. But that wasn’t the impression he was getting from their faces, their posture, the people around the table who were starting to laugh at Khan’s dramatic put-upon expression. This mishmash of languages seemed as normal to them as the lack of cutlery and the mismatched bowls.

 

It was a little like sitting in on someone else’s family gathering.

 

He tried to watch them for a while, shifting restlessly and trying not to let just how awkward he felt show on his face. Eventually he gave up and ate.

 

-

 

They didn’t seem to want to leave. They lingered over the dirty bowls after the food had vanished. The conversations, in their stew of languages, carried on around him as animated as when the meal began. And he knew that it wasn’t so different to the comradery between the red-shirts on any ship, or the mix of dialects you’d find in any truly big Federation meeting but somehow it felt worlds away. Alien and private.

 

It was almost a relief when Layla wandered over and tapped him on the shoulder, breaking his thoughts.

 

“Yes?”

 

“You seem…dissatisfied Captain.” She observed.

 

“How could I be?” Kirk replied. “You’re the most civil kidnappers I’ve ever had.”

 

She gave him a small half-smile. “Could I persuade you to stop bothering her for an hour or so if I showed you our laboratories?”

 

Jim’s eyes flicked briefly to Khan. He might still dig out something useful but for the moment he couldn’t understand what was happening in front of him. And Layla, whether she could be trusted or not, had said she would help.

 

He shrugged, smiled half-heartedly and rose to follow her.

 

He waited until the doors of the turbolift had shut properly before asking-

 

“So are they actually trying to kill me?”

 

“Do you still believe that?”

 

Kirk sighed. “No. I suppose not.”

 

“Well then-”

 

“What are you up to?”

 

“Saving our benign dictator from your particular sort of charm?” She suggested.

 

“No, I don’t think you are.” He observed drily.

 

“Well done, you are learning.”

 

“So?”

 

She made a small exasperated noise and frowned at a point somewhere past his head.

 

“You’re studying us.”

 

Jim did not attempt to deny it.

 

“It seemed like the smart thing to do.”

 

“Oh I agree.” She replied and when she caught Kirk’s sceptical look she shrugged. “It is arguable that a portion of your ‘Eugenics War’ was due to misunderstandings. Perhaps if you can see us as something other than our design specifications we will be able to relate to each other without destroying half of civilisation.”

 

He was tempted to say something flippant about ‘The War’ and who started it but restrained himself.

 

“Are we going to your lab?” He asked instead.

 

“Eventually. I thought I might show you something else first.”

 

The doors slid open and she led him across. It looked a lot like Deck 8, cramped with the lingering smell of maintenance’s chemicals. They turned into what was once part of the Reclamation Faculty and she opened what looked from the outside to be a wardrobe.

 

It was perhaps the size of a walk-in closet. There was a small table, with a neat light blue cloth and a drawing of the woman in the centre. Paper flowers and unlit candles were arranged in front of her like offerings.

 

Layla stood aside, motioning for him to have a closer look. The woman in the picture was young, with a wide smile, an oval face and an hourglass figure. Her clothes were neat and while old-fashioned he thought they were probably American rather than Indian. Not that he was entirely sure what Indian clothing was supposed to look like.

 

“Is this a shrine?” He asked, since Layla didn’t seem inclined to explain on her own.

 

“I believe some of the Christians consider her a saint, but most of us do not. Think of it as…a memorial.”

 

“The first Augment?” Jim guessed and Layla shook her head.

 

“One of the scientists who designed…you?”

 

“No Captain.”

 

He turned back to the drawing and frowned.

 

“Who was she?”

 

“She was born,” Layla began softly, “in your country. To a poor family. She was barely educated. She married her cousin, had five children and died when she was thirty one. Her oldest daughter barely outlived her.”

 

Jim stared stoically at the face smiling out of the drawing.

 

“What did she do?”

 

“Herself? Nothing.”

 

“Then why do you have a memorial to one unlucky woman?”

 

That earned him a half-smile and a nod, as if she was satisfied with his line of questioning.

 

“Before she died a doctor removed a cancerous portion from her womb. It grew. This was…many years before my species was created but a portion of her- they used her to test medicines, to understand how cells function, to see if we could survive being sent into space…” She trailed off and when Kirk glanced towards her she looked away.

 

He watched her shift and pinch the bridge of her nose. Jim waited while she fidgeted and finally settled for staring at the picture, the dead woman smiling out of the sketch.

 

“There are, a great many people that we would…never have existed without.” She continued, finally. “Thousands, perhaps tens of thousands. Doctors, nurses, geneticists, chemists, biologists, psychiatrists, the list is enormous. And, and there are a great many good, noble names on it Captain but- but she is the only one we honour.”

 

“Why?” Jim asked, without expecting an answer

 

“I would leave that for you to judge Captain.”

 

Of course. Because that was how they did things, deflection and ambiguous responses as indirect as possible unless they wanted something.

 

Kirk wondered if they were going to keep throwing these little tests his way as long as he was on their ship. Layla seemed to think that this, the woman and her little shrine, were important even if Jim couldn’t for the life of him see how. Why venerate a victim of circumstance over people who’d had a controlling hand in their own fate? He wondered what Uhura would have made of it, or Chekov and shook his head. There were plenty of experts back home who could analysis this little incident to death.

 

“What was her name?”

 

“Begum Henrietta.” Layla replied.

 

She shook her head, took a deep breath and finally looked back at him. She smiled.

 

“Come, I will show you my work.”

 

-

 

There weren’t as many labs as he’d expected; three of the indoor gardens, a simplistic chemistry lab, a databank full of planets and a room packed with what looked like salvaged parts from three dozen different ships. For a group of super-geniuses who could catch up on three hundred years of technological advancement (and improve on it) in a year they seemed to be slacking.

 

Even if Jim was starting to believe that they were lacking funds and basic resources.

 

Layla snorted when he suggested it.

 

“We are not _all_ scientists Captain.” She declared. “Grisha is a linguist, Hakim a theologian, Ling makes automata-”

 

“Automata?” He queried.

 

“Moving mechanical objects,” She paused searching for a better term and shrugged. “Toys. Clocks.”

 

Kirk wondered what it said about a person if, faced with Warp tech, they stepped back five centuries to tinker with clockwork. He didn’t ask. It seemed insignificant compared to how much they’d actually reverse-engineered or understood by dissecting the shield-arrays of other ships.

 

Which was not something his guide was prepared to talk about. He asked her about weapons systems and she gave him a particularly disappointed look. The official line appeared to be that they were not, and had no intention of, building weapons, modifying them or conducting any kind of experiments.

 

It seemed about as likely as Klingons adopting pacifism but Layla didn’t seem inclined to say anything more no matter how much he wheedled.

 

She was happy to talk about their problematic food supply, vague trade descriptions, storage strategies and the hope that eventually the on-ship gardens could make them self-sufficient. She also seemed eager to complain about a diet that was chiefly rice and lentils.

 

She spent what must have been hours explaining how genetic modification and careful environmental control would increase the variety and yield of their crops. He paid quite a bit of attention to how the garden-rooms had been modified, but unfortunately it didn’t seem to be anything targetable from outside. Just a rather simple adjustment to the lights, an admittedly clever drainage system, and a foot of topsoil.

 

By the time Layla had finished they were hungry and heading down to the galley again.

 

They shared some sort of brown mush while Kirk asked after her children. He got an unnecessarily long-winded explanation of the ad-hoc education system they’d set up and the way the entire…community was chipping in to help raise them.

 

Somehow it spiralled into a debate about the merits of various systems of government and who, exactly, ran the Federation anyway. He wouldn’t have encouraged it in any of the others, but Layla was good-natured about the discussion even if she was verging on paranoid about the Federation.

 

It was easy to lose track of time talking, convincing himself that it would pry out something else-

 

It felt far too close to discussions he’d had with Spock that had stretched out into the next shifts until, almost drunk on exhaustion, he’d staggered back to his room and slept. The only real difference was that on this ship someone would lock the door behind him.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lentil porridge- Tarka dhal.   
> Grace- Some of these practices of blessing may be inaccurate. Apologies if they are.   
> Begum- Honorific address for a woman of rank in many parts of India. Of Turkic orgin.  
> Henrietta- Henrietta Lacks from which the HeLa cell line was taken. There is a good chance someone you know is only alive because of Henrietta Lacks.


	8. Chapter 8

 

Jim woke disquieted and the feeling didn’t fade.

 

He tried to tell himself that it was the cell, not knowing whether his crew was alright, being kidnapped, being a prisoner, being-

 

He tried to tell himself that it was because it was his third day on their ship and Khan could easily turn out to be a liar.

 

Yes that was it.

 

He snorted and put on another charming smile for his guard, Ling who made clockwork-

 

Captain James Kirk had never been particularly good at lying to himself.

 

He thought about chatting to Ling but found he couldn’t quite summon the energy. He asked her to take him to the galley instead.

 

The hallway the turbolift opened on to smelt of fresh bread and he could hear a man singing about Paradise.

 

It stopped as they walked in. Hakim – he was reasonably sure that Hakim was the one with the long well-groomed beard – smiled at them.

 

“Salaam alaykum.” The Augment said. Jim chose to assume it was a greeting.

 

“Good morning.”

 

“Would you like some breakfast Captain?”

 

Jim accepted the offer and took a seat. One that happened to give him a wide view of the room and the connecting corridors. Ling seemed to have slipped away, perhaps she was another one that was uncomfortable around humans-

 

He watched Hakim take a large, flat loaf from the oven and some plates from the side. The Augment spoke in soft almost musical Arabic as he laid the loaf on the table and took a cushion opposite Kirk.

 

“I'm sorry but I don't speak Arabic.” Jim told him.

 

“It is a blessing, Captain.” The man replied before tearing the loaf neatly in half.

 

He pushed a small bowl of the suspiciously red substance from the day before between them and Jim wondered whether it was worth trying it.

 

“Grisha said that you were religious.” Jim observed taking the offered bowl and pouring a little on his bread.

 

“I doubt he used such polite words.” Hakim responded.

 

“No.” Jim admitted.

 

The red sauce was sour and surprisingly spicey-

 

“He is not comfortable with faith.” Hakim explained. “And his country was at best suspicious of mine.”

 

Jim wondered briefly if the Augment was referring to his faith or his country. It probably didn't matter.

 

“You’ve got a real variety of people here.” Jim noted.

 

“We have members from twenty six countries, forty six racial groups and thirty one religious groups.” Hakim replied.

 

He never seemed to look up, Kirk noticed. They’d been talking for a good few minutes now without any eye contact which made him wonder-

 

“Have you seen our prayer room, Captain?”

 

Jim confessed that he hadn't and Hakim told him that he should. Then fell silent.

 

He kept his eyes down, as if he was talking to the table. His face had, now Jim thought about it, stayed oddly blank throughout. He hadn't smiled or frowned, it was almost Vulcan but then all the Vulcans he'd ever met let some of their emotions show through their tone of voice.

 

Jim didn't really want to think about how many of those people had died because of Nero.

 

And Hakim's voice, it was almost flat. Purposely emotionless. He wondered how well they could keep up that sort of front-

 

Another thing he should look in to and if he had the time he could have found a selection of subtle ways to test them. As it was he tried desperately to think of something that wasn't an invitation for a sermon. Nothing was forthcoming.

 

“So,” Jim said, steeling himself. “What do you believe?”

 

“There is one God and Muhammed is his prophet.” Hakim murmured. “But many of us are Muslims-”

 

“And you're a different...denomination?” Kirk guessed.

 

Hakim looked up. Not at his face exactly, Kirk noticed, more like the space beside him. His expression was still blank, neutral, but there was more of an edge to his voice.

 

“If any one slew another it would be as if he slaughtered the world.” Hakim quoted.

 

“You're a pacifist?”

 

“I believe the Koran teaches that to take a life is a crime of such scale it is almost unforgivable.” The Augment replied.

 

And on a ship full of soldiers that probably did lead neatly to the idea that everyone was going to hell. Except for Layla's children.

 

On a ship full of soldiers from the Eugenics Wars it did seem like an extreme idea, a sentiment out of place.

 

Kirk frowned. “You follow Khan.”

 

“I follow a Khan,” Hakim corrected. “But it is Bacha Khan not Khan Noonien.”

 

“And is he here?” Kirk asked.

 

The Augment looked away and there might have been a slight hint of movement at the corner of his mouth but Jim wasn't sure.

 

“No Captain. He was not an Augment and he died before we were designed.”

 

Another thing he'd have to look up when he got back.

 

“Weren't you a soldier?” Kirk asked.

 

“I was a killer Captain.” Hakim replied tonelessly. “As all my kind were. As you are-”

 

“I'm an explorer.” Kirk corrected without bothering to try and hide his outrage.

 

“But you have killed.” The Augment pointed out calmly.

 

“In defence of myself and others, yes.” Kirk declared.

 

“You value some lives over others and you justify your sin by pointing to theirs.”

 

“So do a lot of people on this ship.” Kirk responded coldly.

 

“Yes.” Hakim agreed with a small nod. “And they are wrong.”

 

It was so blunt and sure that Jim could understand why someone might describe the man as a fanatic. How different would the last few years have been if Admiral Marcus had opened this man’s stasis pod instead of Singh’s? He would have liked to think that all of it, London, Qo’Nos, the _Vengeance_ , San Francisco would never have happened. But Marcus had been desperate, blinkered. Faced with a weapon from the Eugenics War that had declared itself a pacifist he’d probably have killed it and moved on to another case.

 

“If that’s what you believe, how do you justify your time as a soldier?” Jim wondered.

 

“I don’t.” Hakim answered. “I acted wrongly. I sinned.”

 

Which was when the logical conclusion of those views hit Jim.

 

“Jesus.” He whispered.

 

“I’m sorry Captain?”

 

What would it be like, to believe in Heaven and Hell, as sure physical things the way they had in the old days and know you had done something unforgivable? What would it be like to honestly think you’d earned lifetimes of torture?

 

Suddenly he didn’t feel like he had the stomach for the rest of this conversation.

 

He pasted on another smile. It was starting to feel harder.

 

“Thanks for breakfast.” He said and it sounded normal enough. “How about we go see that prayer room?”

 

-

 

It was on deck four, in the upper level of the recreation deck which was probably the largest room on the ship that didn’t have an important piece of engineering stuck in it. If he’d had any remaining doubt about why they’d taken him and why they’d let him out of their make-shift Brig, the prayer room would have ended it.

 

Which might have been why they’d kept telling him he should see it-

 

It was divided, Jim could tell that much, but it was often difficult to tell where and what exactly it had been sectioned in to. There were crosses on the walls, some plain, flat, paint and some ornate, shining things as tall as a man surrounded by icons he couldn’t identify. There were raised platforms, alters, weighed down by candles, paper flowers, incense in dozens of forms-

 

Books.

 

He thumbed through one on a Christian alter, handbound, handwritten, and found he could neither read nor recognise the writing inside. It looked like a cross between Greek, Russian and Hebrew. He tried a book left on a plain alter under a canopy. That one was a mass of indecipherable squiggles.

 

He moved on. A slightly raised circular platform caught his eye, covered in neat rows of woven mats and thick books each on it’s own wooden stand, like a decorative X low to the ground. When he got closer he found the whole thing span, and slowly corrected itself, adjusted moved. He couldn’t see a pattern in it’s motion.

 

Jim turned a slow circle next to it trying to take in the room when he’d rather have blocked it out. The colours, so bright in places they seemed to light the space around them in saffrons and scarlets. The idols and icons showing men, women, children, hybrid things and abstract shapes. The smell of candlewax and oil lamps, people and wood smoke-

 

There seemed to be so much. It occurred to him that when he wrote up his report he was sure to overlook something. And having to report this seemed-

 

Hakim made a small coughing sound behind him, reminding Kirk abruptly that he wasn’t alone, that he wasn’t free-

 

“With respect Captain it is not permissible to wear shoes there.”

 

Jim murmured an apology and stooped to remove them.

 

“What is your opinion?” The Augment enquired.

 

“I’m sorry?”

 

“Of this.” Hakim clarified and Jim’s heart sank a little further.

 

“It’s-” He almost said ‘human’ but caught himself in time.

 

He wanted to compare it to places he’d seen across the galaxy, picking out the pieces that reminded him of each planet but the whole room was made of pieces, like two dozen planets condensed into one deck.

 

“We don’t have anything like this.” He admitted. “It’s…interesting.”

 

He wondered if that sounded as ominous as he thought it did. Hakim didn’t seem to notice.

 

Jim was trying to think of something that would sound both honest and complimentary when Parvati wandered in.

 

She stopped abruptly in front of him and stared for a moment too long.

 

Jim wondered if he should apologise, almost started to. She took a small, wooden-looking thing from her pocket and thrust it towards him. He wasn’t sure if it was meant to be a gift or something he should defuse.

 

“It’s Lord Ganesh,” She informed him. “I want-I want you to have it.”

 

Kirk took it carefully, as if it might accidentally go off. The image carved into the wood was of an almost-humanoid creature, with four arms, an enormous belly and an elephant’s head.

 

“He is one of our Gods.” She explained. “The remover of obstacles.”

 

Jim stared at it unsure what to say. It seemed beyond bizarre for anyone in an age of Warp cores and transporters to think a piece of wood, a single image, helpful. And yet-

 

“I thought…” Parvati continued awkwardly. “That you might appreciate His help. Because of your Admirals-”

 

She trailed off having apparently run out of things to say.

 

Kirk still couldn’t think of a single sensible thing to respond with.

 

She slipped past, barefoot, while he was still staring at the idol. After a while he heard her chanting prayers like poetry in another language he’d never heard before.

 

And perhaps it was stupid but-

 

He found that, for the moment, he didn’t want to see any of them. Didn’t want to charm and smile and talk anymore. He didn’t want to see their superstitions, spread out in beautiful displays, or the way they seemed so comfortable with their differences. With each other’s differences.

 

He did not want useless panaceas from people he had very nearly killed.

 

He wanted to retreat from it all, this garish living display of his planet’s history, all the things good and bad they’d left behind. If he asked they’d take him back to his cell but that-

 

That would be too much like a retreat for Captain James Kirk.

 

And he probably wouldn’t have been able to explain it when he got debriefed anyway.

 

So he shoved ‘Lord Ganesh’ in his back pocket irreverently and turned back to Hakim. Jim repeated how _interesting_ the place was, in the blandly attentive voice he reserved for Admirals and particularly awful social functions. The prayer room was _very interesting_ , but really he’d seen almost nothing of the hangers, the workshops, the archives and shouldn’t a Miranda class have had an arboretum?

 

-

 

They trudged through every section of the ship Kirk could think of. He’d justify it to the Admiralty by saying he’d been looking for weapons, not that he’d needed space to walk and consider. That he’d wanted an excuse to ignore the crew.

 

He didn’t find any weapons a Miranda wouldn’t have come with.

 

The hanger still had a few small craft inside, even if a lot of it seemed to have become storage. He wondered if they were goods for trade.

 

He noted the lack of adjustments to the anti-matter generators and the wealth of them over the shield grids. How the archives were all impossibly full. How the rooms the Augments had taken for their own all seemed to be small quarters, the kind given to enlisted personnel and crewmen third class.

 

He managed to drag it out for a good, long time and Hakim was so quiet, so still he could almost imagine he was alone.

 

Eventually he got hungry. He gave in, gradually, to the fact finding something to eat meant going back to the populated parts of the ship.

 

As he headed back up, Hakim silent and blank beside him, he could almost convince himself that he wasn’t under guard, almost let the illusion that he wasn’t a prisoner take hold.

 

But Jim had never been good at lying to himself.

 

-o-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> General note on racial/religious groups- The numbers really depend on what you classify as seperate races and religions. The numbers given are high-end counts. So Ethiopian Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, Catholics, Protestants, Evangelicals, Anglicans, Quakers etc are counted seperately rather than as 'Christians' and Punjabis, Tamils, Bengalis, Gujaratis etc are counted seperately rather than as 'Indians'.
> 
> A Land Called Paradise- Kareem Salama.  
> Salaam alaykum- Arabic. Literally ‘Gods peace.’ A greeting.  
> There is one God and Muhammed is his prophet- Muslim declaration of faith.  
> 'slaying of one person as if he slew the whole people'- Koran 5:32. Also the Torah.  
> Bacha- Literally 'King'. Pashto.  
> Khan- A title as well as a name. A ruler, generally translated as 'Prince'. Turkic and Mongolian origins.  
> Bacha Khan- Also Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, a nonviolence and independence activist. Contemporary of Gandhi. Opposed the partition of India.  
> Unrecognisable writing- Amharic (Ethiopian) and Punjabi respectively.  
> Wooden stands- It is not permitted to let the Koran touch the ground.  
> Raised platform- The rotation is to allow it to face (roughly) Earth and therefore Mecca.  
> Removing shoes- Common practice in Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh and Muslim places of worship.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains alcohol. Beware incoming Kirk

 

The galley wasn’t empty. Jim was starting to get the idea it was never empty-

 

Grisha and Ffion had apparently decided to sample that moonshine. Which was just wonderful because the only thing better than dealing with insane super-soldiers from one of the most violent periods in history was dealing with drunk, insane, super-soldiers-

 

They looked up when he came in and their conversation stuttered and stopped.

 

It was little more than a murmur behind him while he scrounged up some bread and something that he really hoped hadn’t been made with that Klingon fungus. By the time he looked up again Hakim was gone, which ruined his idea of avoiding people by having supper on the move. After a moment’s thought he joined the two Augments, sitting somewhere else would have been too much like-

 

Well he wasn’t going to make it so obvious anyway-

 

Ffion gave him a thoughtful look.

 

“You still look like shit.” She announced.

 

“Have a drink.” Grisha offered as if it was the obvious cure.

 

They poured him something like a double before he’d said yes. He took the glass and paused long enough to go through all the reasons drinking it would be a bad idea then swallowed it in one go.

 

It was worse than Romulan ale in every conceivable way.

 

“Is this supposed to be pineapple?”

 

Grisha laughed and Ffion scowled at the bottle.

 

“Strawberry.” She muttered.

 

“I thought you were supposed to be geniuses.” Jim murmured, more to the remnants of his drink than to either of the Augments.

 

“Oh so I guess _you_ can reverse engineer strawberries from scratch then?” Ffion grumbled.

 

“At least that one tasted like a fruit.” Grisha pointed out philosophically.

 

They moved on naturally to the next bottle, another double for Jim and almost half a pint for each of the Augments. That one tasted more like cucumber. The next was a strange mix of lime and cinnamon.

 

“Why are you trying to make strawberry vodka?” Jim asked after they reached the bottle that seemed to be aiming for aniseed via carrots.

 

Ffion gave a small half-hearted shrug. “I miss strawberries. And decent music. And comic books. Don’t you, y’know, miss stuff? Out here?”

 

“No.” Jim said carefully. “But our missions aren’t exactly-”

 

“Exile?” She suggested.

 

“I was going to say poorly stocked.”

 

“I,” Grisha cut in. “Miss the sunlight. It’s like skàbma out here all the time.”

 

“Scabmah?” Jim queried.

 

“A word the Laps used for winter.” Grisha explained.

 

Which spiralled off into an impromptu language lesson, the aim of which seemed to be teaching Jim to say ‘cheers’ in as many languages as they could remember between them. By the time they got to ‘welsh’ Jim was pretty sure they’d started making things up.

 

Then there were more bottles.

 

And he knew he was drunk but it meant he could get away with not thinking for a while.

 

Then they ran out of bottles.

 

And the last one had left a taste somewhere between a peach and a tomato in his mouth that just wouldn’t go away. He got slowly to his feet and staggered on his first step. But Ffion actually tripped over and ended up in a laughing heap.

 

Jim wondered blearily whether this meant he could claim he’d out-drunk an Augment-

 

Then Grisha was hauling her up and offering Jim a hand. Jim found himself slinging an arm over Grishas’s shoulder and tangling his hand in that wonderful dark hair. On the other side Ffion giggled, lurched and almost pulled them all over.

 

They managed to get to the turbolift intact, which was something.

 

They’d apparently decided at some point that Grisha should be responsible for the steering and possibly Ffion’s share of the walking. Which meant they didn’t bump into quite as many innocent walls as they might have stumbling out on to deck…6? Had to be. The opposite direction to his cell but-

 

They stopped somewhere towards the port edge of the saucer. Grisha carefully disentangled Jim’s arm from his shoulder and went so far as to practically prop him against the wall.

 

“I’m not that drunk!” Jim protested which was apparently hilarious because Ffion started laughing again.

 

He turned away as Grisha knocked on one of the quarter-doors, so he heard rather than saw it open.

 

“Mishti,” He heard Parvati’s voice and tried to turn his attention to something else but he still heard her ask her wife what was wrong

 

He heard Ffion say, almost mournfully, that she just wanted a strawberry-

 

He wandered a little further away, enough that if they spoke softly he was truly out of earshot. He thought, briefly, about trying to slip away while they were distracted but even if he managed it, if they didn’t find him, if he managed to steal a shuttle from them-

 

He’d be stranded in a vehicle only capable of sub-Warp speeds, lost, on limited supplies. And he’d never be able to say whether the Augments really had taken Klingon warships. Jim was starting to think they had, starting to suspect that may be Khan was telling the truth because this entire ridiculous episode didn’t make a damn bit of sense unless she wanted him to-

 

Grisha appeared beside him with a smile that looked a lot less…roguish than it had been before the moonshine.

 

“So, um” He started eloquently. “Anything you want to do now?”

 

Jim chuckled and Grisha’s smile vanished.

 

“What?”

 

“Ffion said you,” Jim waved a hand expressively, partly because of the alcohol and partly because he wasn’t quiet sober enough to say ‘moon-eyes’ with a straight face. “So it sounded a little like-”

 

“And that’s…funny?” Grisha asked.

 

“It would be the _worst_ chat up line I’ve heard in a while.”

 

“That-it wasn’t exactly what I meant.” Grisha began awkwardly. “We uh- we don’t exactly-”

 

“Fraternise with humans?” Jim suggested.

 

“Do chat up lines.”

 

Jim snorted.

 

“So they made you to be wallflowers?” He asked, because he wasn’t _blind_ and most of them seemed to have been designed with looks in mind as well as…whatever else. They might not all have been stunning but they were all at least above average and… And it was actually slightly unnerving that he’d noticed that on some level even when he was half-convinced they were planning to throw him out of an air lock.

 

Grisha shrugged. “They just didn’t want us to…ever make the first move.”

 

“Why?”

 

“I dunno exactly.” He admitted. “Probably a combination of things.”

 

“Such as?” Jim prompted.

 

Grisha sighed. “We’re stronger than you. We recover from things that you don’t. If you limit contact with humans outside the chain of command your soldiers are less likely to have loyalties outside the chain of command. Politics. Lawsuits. Religious idiots.”

 

He finished with a shrug.

 

And damn now Jim was actually _thinking_ about it. As though it was an option rather than first prize for the stupidest thing he’d have done on a ship since taking those torpedoes aboard.

 

It wasn’t as though his last experience with an alien had gone well. Did they even count as aliens?

 

Not that something being incredibly stupid had stopped him in the past. Especially if it seemed like fun- And it wasn’t as though anyone was gonna drug him and kidnap him _now_. And it would be deeply wrong to judge experiences with all aliens, or possibly-aliens, based on Tiri’s actions.

 

Horribly wrong.

 

Jim let out a small snorting laugh and Grisha looked as if he was wondering whether their kidnapped Captain had gone crazy or was about to fall over.

 

“So,” Jim asked with the kind of smile that had made crowds at backroom bars step back. “Anything you want to do now?”

 

“You said that was an awful-”

 

“And you said you didn’t know anything about chat up lines.” Jim interrupted. “So you don’t know any better.”

 

It got him another smile, a small nod, and a lot of odd glances that didn’t quite make it to Jim’s eyes.

 

“Do you?”

 

Jim shrugged magnanimously, what was the harm on adding another species to the list?

 

“Sure. Why not.”

 

-

 

Grisha’s room was exactly the same size as the cell. Two crew’s cabins knocked together so the shared bathroom became an ensuite, half the furniture removed. The doors to one of the wardrobes had been taken out and it had been turned into a sort of sunken bookcase. It was mostly empty with a few scattered books that had the slightly ragged look of something handmade. There was a pencil sketch of a mountain on one wall and a few crumpled shirts on the floor. Grisha kicked them under the bed and Jim pretended not to notice.

 

Grisha stepped close and then stopped. He stood there for a moment his head slightly tilted, his hands slightly raised as if he didn’t quite know what to do. It made Jim wonder if he’d never actually- God this wasn’t going to be some awful awkward fumbling was it?

 

Unless-

 

They didn’t make the first move, so Jim closed the distance between them and kissed him. And he was being good about it too, slow, gentle, in case Grisha actually hadn’t done any of it before or at least not with a man-

 

He put his hands firmly on Grisha’s ribs, not enough to frighten anybody but enough to connect them, to remind him Jim was there-

 

Grisha took a moment to respond his hands ghosting an inch above Jim’s shirt before settling just above his hips. He seemed alright as far as Jim could tell, he wasn’t tense just…waiting. Perhaps this wasn’t going to be as fun as he’d thought-

 

Jim moved his hands down towards Grisha’s hips, testing and when he didn’t tense, didn’t break their kiss or ask him to slow down, he worked his hands under Grisha’s shirt and started to tug it up. He didn’t get any help taking it off until the last possible minute but Grisha didn’t seem concerned with keeping it on either.

 

Grisha leaned forward again as soon as the shirt was over his head. Just to be sure Jim leaned back.

 

Grisha froze.

 

“You ok?” Jim asked.

 

“Yeah.” He replied a little thickly. “Are you?”

 

The muscles on his chest were as defined as a sculpture’s, like a boxer about to win gold. His pupils were blown impossibly wide, Jim noticed, as if they’d swallowed the whole iris. May be they were just tip-toeing around each other? May be Grisha just wanted him to take the lead-

 

So Jim hooked a hand around his neck and pulled him close again. When they kissed it was rougher, almost forceful and Grisha made small pleased sounds. He slipped his free hand down and was a little disappointed when Grisha did little more than rub circles on Jim’s hips.

 

He pushed trousers and underwear down and then- Then he was standing fully clothed next to an entirely naked and apparently quite interested Augment. Good thing they were externally the same as humans, he wasn’t sure he could have handled the inevitable talk if they weren’t.

 

It was nice enough, the noises Grisha made were pleasant and his skin felt amazing but Jim was starting to feel like he was the only one making an effort.

 

He wasn’t really used to being with someone else and having to take his own shirt off. It was only after he’d removed it himself that Grisha started touching him. Running his hands up and down Jim’s back, dragging his fingers just along the top of Jim’s trousers like he was waiting. Or asking for permission.

 

Which really wasn’t how he would have expected something like this to go.

 

He undid his own trousers and hoped that would serve as permission or enough of a hint or whatever it was the other man needed to-

 

Grisha pulled back enough to breathe.

 

“Can I?” He murmured.

 

It would have been bad manners to say it was about time. What more did the man need? He wasn’t tense, he wasn’t frightened, was he really so inexperienced that-

 

Jim cut off that line of thought before it ruined his evening and said ‘yes’ instead.

 

He’d expected something tentative or fumbling.

 

Grisha knelt.

 

And then his hands were- And his mouth-

 

Jim had to admit that yes he probably _had_ done this before and he might have stopped to think about why else someone would be so hesitant but under the circumstances-

 

Grisha did something wonderful with his lips and Jim ended up leaning forward, grasping his shoulder and tangling a hand in his hair. As if he needed it to stay up.

 

If it had been Jim he’d have tried to draw it out. To make it last. It was better that way, for both parties, at least that’s what he’d always thought. Grisha seemed to have the opposite philosophy and he knew what he was doing pretty well so-

 

He kept his mouth there when Jim stumbled half a step and moaned. Jim could feel the way his cheeks and tongue moved as he swallowed and-

 

And in a moment he was back on his feet again, smirking and wiping at the corner of his lips.

 

He settled down on the bed, waiting patiently for Jim to join him.

 

It ended up feeling, from Jim’s end anyway, odd and almost perfunctory.

 

His partner was attractive. It had been an exceptionally good blowjob. And when he took Grisha’s cock in his hand and stroked the man writhed and whimpered.

 

It should have been good.

 

But there was something about the way he’d held back, the way he’d stilled when Jim climbed over him that wasn’t quite right-

 

Grisha’s hands twisted in the sheets. He started speaking Russian, fast, garbled words that Jim wouldn’t have been able to make sense of anyway. He caught ‘pushalsta’ and ‘galoopka’ and ‘kylla’ before Grisha spasmed and…finished.

 

He lay there for a moment before digging out one of the shirts to clean himself off. Then he tugged Jim down into a hug that felt more real than the sex.

 

“Thank you.” He mumbled into Jim’s neck.

 

“Thank _you_.” Jim replied because it had been a good blowjob and it seemed polite.

 

“It’s funny,” Grisha murmured. “Despite everything…we miss you.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Skabma- The darkest part of winter. Sami, I am unsure which language but suspect Northern Sami as that is the most widely spoken.  
> Laps/Laplanders- Terms used in English to refer to the Sami people. Not always considered acceptable by the Sami people.  
> Iechyd da- Cheers, Welsh.   
> Mishti- Literally ‘sweet’. Bengali. An endearment.   
> Crew cabins- I had a reference picture for this once. The internet ate it. Errors possible.  
> Pushalsta- ‘Please’. Russian.  
> Galoopka- Literally ‘my dove’. Russian pet name/endearment.  
> Kylla- Yes. Finnish.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Early update because I'm going to a wedding tomorrow and do not wish to gamble on the interwebs of London.

 

Khan, damn her, was not a liar.

 

The ship was large, fitted with more photon torpedoes then he wanted to think about and similar enough to the D6 for Kirk to feel confident it was Klingon. But it was hard to get a proper sense of her capacities when he was being marched straight up to the bridge.

 

The doors slid open and Jim’s heart sank because really that was the last person he wanted to see at the controls.

 

Ling left him at the doorway. Singh did not turn around.

 

He wanted to say something disparaging, something flippant but-

 

But the last time they’d been on a ship’s bridge the man had stunned Scotty, broken Dr Marcus’ leg in three places, killed an Admiral with his bare hands and beaten Jim black and blue. Then his ship had fallen out of the sky, burning, with his crew inside, plummeting against the failing gravity field, suffocating in the thin air-

 

And then the _Vengeance_ had crashed into San Francisco.

 

“Are you going to sit down?” Singh enquired in the same flat, calm tone.

 

Jim glanced at the Captain’s chair. They’d fitted cuffs to the arm-rests.

 

“What if I don’t?”

 

“Then I force you to.” Singh replied. “And you spend three hours at Warp waiting for medical attention.”

 

He wanted to- to do something. To object, to fight, to run, something but-

 

But he really didn’t have a choice.

 

So he walked over to the Chair and sat, folding his arms.

 

After a moment Singh stepped away from the controls, giving Jim a view of the mass of circuitry and bare wires he’d attached to it.

 

“Not the neatest piece of work I’ve seen from you.” He quipped and if it was a little late well he didn’t really like the idea of accidentally blowing up when he hit Warp because someone had gotten their sums wrong.

 

“The ship has been adjusted for automatic flight and the course is already programed in.” Singh informed him. “The weapons have been disabled. The shields are functioning at full capacity. When you come out of Warp the vessel will broadcast a human distress signal across all channels.”

 

Kirk took a deep breath. “What happens next?”

 

“That depends on your superiors.” Singh replied.

 

“I take it you’ve left them a message?”

 

Singh inclined his head. “Databank on the emergency bridge, five decks down.”

 

Why on earth did Klingons insist on putting their emergence bridge right below their primary one?

 

Kirk sighed and forced himself to look straight at Singh. “What the hell was the point of all this?”

 

“You may need to be more specific.” Singh suggested and Jim couldn’t tell if that was sarcasm or-

 

“You know damn well you didn’t need to kidnap me!” Kirk snarled. “You could have sent an empty ship. Even if _for some reason_ you needed to take a Starfleet officer to prove a point, you didn’t _have_ to let me out of that cell. Hell you didn’t have to let me regain consciousness, you could have thrown me in a cryotube and loaded that aboard. So why didn’t you?”

 

“Haven’t you worked it out?” Singh asked mildly.

 

“I think so.” Kirk snapped.

 

“Then please, explain.”

 

Singh leaned back against the console and Kirk tramped down the urge to storm over and punch him.

 

“You want to _talk_. You want a dialogue with the Federation and you think as things stand if you tried to make contact we’d blow you out of the sky. But you think that if you can convince _me_ that you aren’t all murdering psychopaths, if you can get _me_ saying that to the Admirals you’re in with a chance.”

 

“And it only took you three days.” Singh intoned. “Congratulations.”

 

“You,” Kirk growled. “Are a mass murderer and I am _going_ to do everything I can to bring you in-”

 

“But not,” Singh interrupted. “If it risks killing children and non-combatants.”

 

“You _bastard_.”

 

Singh shrugged a shoulder as if it didn’t matter at all. Hell from his point of view it probably didn’t after all he would get what he damn well wanted and the thought of that made Jim burn.

 

“Put your hands on the arm rests Captain.”

 

He thought about resisting or refusing but-

 

But it wasn’t really a choice.

 

So Kirk gave him the most hateful glare he could muster as he put his arms out over the cuffs. Singh didn’t seem to notice at all and fastened them with the same blank dispassionate expression he’d held through the whole damn conversation. As soon as he pulled back Jim tested the restraints. Some kind of cloth, firm enough but with work and time he should be able to slip out which-

 

Which they’d probably counted on.

 

He cursed at Singh’s back well after he was out of sight and only stopped when he felt the Warp core rumble into life. The stars bled to streaks. And the ship leapt forward.

 

-

 

The debriefing was hell.

 

As soon as the medical staff they sent up had cleared him he’d been whisked into an ‘informal interview’ with what had started out as three Admirals and ended up as seven Admirals and a Fleet Admiral. Which might have been semi-tolerable if he hadn’t had to start over five times to make sure everyone was up to speed.

 

They kept interrupting, They’d stop to argue among themselves or accuse him of somehow causing the whole thing.

 

And he must have been exhausted but it took him a moment to realise just how scared they were.

 

It almost made him angry- Had they thought Singh would vanish peacefully into the stars? Had they thought the Klingons _wouldn’t_ be defensive after the Federation’s confused, half-censored stance on the Qo’Nos incident had finally come out? Had they thought the Klingons _wouldn’t_ respond to negations and vague threats with a show of force?

 

He got through it some how.

 

By the time they let him out the word had got round and the com system in the quarters put aside for him was being constantly harassed by the Enterprise. Jim paused before answering because what if-

 

He needn’t have worried.

 

They were _there_ , on his ship and they were fine. And for the moment that was all he needed to know.

 

-

 

The Enterprise took three days to arrive. Which was plenty of time to churn out a series of increasingly detailed reports, unfortunately.

 

It was also more than enough time to try and find out what was in Singh’s message.

 

It meant he had time to brief his crew on the important points.

 

It meant, in theory, that Kirk would be ready for it all this time.

 

Because if the Federation agreed to meet them they’d be bringing the Enterprise along. They’d have to; Kirk was the only Captain in the fleet who had met them, who had talked to them, who had fought them.

 

And Jim had a horrible feeling they were going to agree.

 


	11. Chapter 11

 

It had only been a week but it still felt strange to be in the Chair again. Not on the Enterprise, Kirk’s ship was more a home to him than anywhere else he could remember. And not acting as Captain, which came naturally enough. But being in the Chair.

 

He wondered if it was because of how they’d set up his transport home; the Captain’s chair on a Klingon bridge with straps at the arm-rests. He wondered if that was why they’d done it, to throw him off balance now on his own ship.

 

Probably.

 

Jim relaxed back into the Chair and consciously made sure his hands were still on the arm-rests.

 

He almost- _almost_ \- wished they’d had an Ambassador or some sort of politician along rather than just Starfleet. He knew, vaguely, that the Council had argued against sending any of their people by pointing to legalisation to do with first contact, political dissent and the suddenly dubious definition of ‘species’. And he suspected, like any Officer worth his salt would, that they were being hung out to dry. That it was a drawn out way of saying that it was _Starfleet’s_ mess and if the ‘Fleet couldn’t deal with it then they could take the fall.

 

At least they’d been careful with the Admirals: Barnett had despised Marcus, Lui had been helping to coordinate resources and infrastructure development on New Vulcan for a year prior to the San Francisco attack, Chandra had been railing against arming to counter the Klingon ‘threat’ when Kirk was still stealing cars. And he knew them all, which helped. Even if they had all been sitting on the board when he’d…improved the Kobayashi Maru test. Most of them had been there when he’d been made Captain too but Chandra had looked like he was chewing a lemon. And he was pretty sure that Barnett would have kept him back at the Academy another two years if Nero hadn’t showed up. Lui would have had him kicked out-

 

Life would have been so much easier if he’d fired those damn torpedoes, Jim mused.

 

It would still have been wrong-

 

Not that he was sure negotiating with Khan was right.

 

But it was a little late to turn back. They had orders and whether he liked it or not with three Admirals following on their own ships a lowly Captain hardly had the authority to make decisions.

 

They fell out of Warp a moment after the _Amundsen_ , two Constitutions towering over a single Miranda, floating alone in the void. The Augments had found the time to paint over the ship’s name and serial number Kirk noticed idly. They linked up coms and waited.

 

The _Audacious_ shot out of the darkness and joined them, the _Resolute_ fell in just behind.

 

It only took a moment and he had all three Admirals in a corner of the main screen. Uhura was at the main Com station along with three more translators, specialising in rare human languages, and a pair of historians. Sulu was at the helm, their torpedoes at his fingertips. Scotty was in Engineering, Chekov was at the Transporter, Bones in the Med-bay and Spock was at his back. They, _he_ , was as ready as it was possible to get.

 

He took a deep breath as Barnett gave the order to hail.

 

And then he was staring at the _Botany Bay_ ’s mutilated Bridge again, complete with Khan Noonein Kaur’s infuriatingly smug smile.

 

There were five of them, crouched on the cushions where the Chair should have been. Khan in the centre, closer to sprawled than sitting, with her hair wound up in something fabric and roughly spherical. _Turban_ , the notes the analysts were hammering out behind him informed him from the side of the screen, _poss religious, poss formal attire._ Singh was on her right, his posture rigid and face set. Layla sat next to him looking as though she was already bored to death. The notes on both of them were either contradicting each other or the analysts were currently engaged in some sort of editorial war-

 

He hadn’t met the other two Augments, but the notes helpfully identified them as being the two other escapees, the ones who had actually attacked Harar and stolen the ship they were in. The woman was very dark, with a tense posture and angry glare. The man was tanned, with neat, modern clothing and a small sort of hat that sat close on his short hair. _Skullcap_ , the notes informed him, unhelpfully.

 

“Admirals,” Khan greeted with an expansive hand gesture, as though she was inviting them to sit down. “Captain. Thank you for joining us.”

 

Kirk noticed Chandra struggling to keep that sour look off his face and wondered whether this would go south in the first five minutes. They managed to get through the introductions, the man he didn’t know was Joachim ( _Israeli?_ The notes wondered) and the woman was Aberash-

 

“While we appreciate the ship,” Barnett began. “I for one am not sure what you want to achieve here. Between the five of you, you have bombed, attacked and sabotaged Starfleet bases and civilian Federation populations, stolen our property, kidnapped children, murdered, maimed and-”

 

“I _did not kidnap-_ ” Layla interrupted.

 

“ _You_ stole _our_ ship first-” Aberash snarled at the same time.

 

“Ladies,” Joachim put in, with a pleading edge in his tone and the argument seemed to die down.

 

“Sir, with respect,” Joachim continued, turning his attention back to the com screen, (while signalling something with homesigns, the notes observed.) “We lived through one war with our Creators and we have no desire to see another.”

 

“That said,” Khan cut in. “We also do not want to give up our lives, freedom or any of our traditions to accomplish this.”

 

They shared a look that wasn’t quite long enough for Barnett to put together a response. The analysts were taking still shots of their hands and comparing them to living languages, dead ones, works of art-

 

“What will it take,” Khan wondered. “To persuade you-”

 

Aberash murmured something. _Arabic_ , the notes proclaimed, ‘ _leave us alone’_

 

“Not to drive us to extinction?”

 

And it was odd, but Jim found that he was not surprised that their expressions were all suddenly so flat, so neutral. That despite Khan’s off-hand tone they seemed horribly sincere. It was….something he already knew, even if he didn’t quite understand it. He found himself looking at his own side instead, Chandra’s open-mouthed shock and Lui’s tight, worried look. Sulu’s hand had tightened over the controls and Barnett wore a small, definite frown-

 

They’d all read his damn reports and somehow they’d been expecting something different.

 

“We are not,” Barnett intoned, slowly, surely. “Going to kill you.”

 

One of the analysts noted, pointlessly, that none of the Augments had relaxed an inch.

 

“There is a set of implied conditions attached to that statement Admiral.” Khan replied, as measured as Barnett had been. “We would prefer if you state them openly.”

 

“You’re a threat to Earth’s security-” Barnett stated.

 

Joachim snorted. Aberash sneered.

 

“There are ninety two of us.” Layla said, in a tone that reminded Jim of a schoolteacher. “There are billions of humans.”

 

“There _were_ eighteen thousand.” Aberash told them while the analysts pointed out twelve different signs of aggression in her tone and posture. “And seven _billion_ of you. Which suggests that _you_ are a greater threat to us than we are to you.”

 

“Mister Singh is single-handedly responsible for the deaths of thousands of our citizens. Are we supposed to believe that you’re harmless?” Chandra intoned dryly.

 

“We’re not harmless.” Joachim agreed. “But neither are you. We do not want to fight you and there are numerous reasons why we should not.”

 

“You’re repeating yourself.” Singh murmured.

 

It was the first thing he’d bothered to say, although all the others had been talkative enough. Jim wasn’t the only one who noticed of course, the analysts seemed to be having another quarrel about what that meant. He wondered idly whether he could turn their scrolling notes off. Then again there was a remote chance they’d hit on something that was actually useful.

 

“Hard as you might find it to believe Admiral, Earth was our home. Whatever our opinions of your government and military-” Khan trailed off and gave a half-hearted shrug. “I am an Indian and a Sikh. I would not risk Harmandir Sahib or Varanasi, anymore than Aberash would risk Lalibela or Joachim would Jerusalem.”

 

It took a moment but between them the analysts and historians came up with an explanation of sorts. They were all places; old cities and a temple that the historians claimed had once been of extreme cultural and religious importance. Had been unique. Kirk didn’t particularly want to know if they were still there but the analysts told them anyway.

 

A typed message slipped silently over from the _Amundsen_ asking whether in Kirk’s opinion they would avoid a fight for the sake of preserving historically important sites. He thought of their archives and wrote ‘yes’. Barnett’s frown deepened.

 

“You realise,” Lui began, sounding significantly less belligerent than Chandra. “That we can not just ignore your existence? By Federation law we are required to do everything in our power to bring Mister Singh to justice.”

 

“By _Federation law_ ,” Aberash spat. “ _You_ should never have held us hostage, whether we were in stasis or not! If _you_ cared about _Federation law_ you would not have threatened any of us with torture and death, whether we were in stasis or not! If _you_ followed _Federation law_ you would never have _used_ one of us as a slave-”

 

“I can _speak_ for myself.” Singh snapped which brought the rather forceful list of their grievances to an abrupt halt.

 

The analysts noted that the level of aggression during the previous exchange had been quite high. Kirk wondered how much they were being paid and whether it was really an appropriate use of Starfleet funds.

 

The silence stretched awkwardly out with two of the Augments staring at each other until Aberash looked away. She whispered something Jim didn’t quite catch. _Hindi_ , the notes informed him, ‘ _forgive me’_.

 

“Alexander Marcus acted without authority and without ord-” Barnett tried.

 

“Alexander Marcus was a Fleet Admiral.” Singh interrupted smooth and emotionless. “He had the funds and resources to design, plan and construct a new class of warship in a year. Are you suggesting that the money, materials, expertise and personnel necessary to build the _Vengeance_ that quickly are so readily available to members of your organisation that they can vanish without a single member of your Council or Starfleet noticing?”

 

“What Admiral Marcus did was not ordered by Starfleet or the Council.” Lui told him firmly.

 

“That you are aware of.” Singh replied.

 

“The actions of a rogue section of the ‘Fleet don’t excuse your response.” Chandra argued.

 

“We are not convinced they were rogue.” Khan stated evenly. “And given your species’ previous policies towards mine you’ll understand if we do not trust you to treat us fairly or to apply the rights enshrined in your Charter to us.”

 

The worried look that Lui and Barnett shared came off slightly calculated to Jim, so he brought up a transcript of the conversation at the bottom of the screen and skimmed over the whole thing. They were…baiting the Augments, he realised, far more successfully than he had on the _Botany Bay_. Teasing out their motivations and grievances, trying to understand them. He wondered if the Augments realised it.

 

“Then you will understand given your ‘species’ previous policies towards us and your more recent attacks on Earth why we don’t trust you to respect our sovereign territory and our citizens’ right to life.” Lui countered.

 

“Previous policies, is that a reference to my leadership of India, Admiral?” Khan mused. “What exactly do you think I did?”

 

“You commited genocide.” Chandra stated, keeping his voice remarkably level considering the murderous expression on his face. “And started a war that resulted in the loss of billions of lives.”

 

“Serious charges indeed.” Khan acknowledged, nodding. “Can you prove any of it?”

 

Chandra’s expression darkened. There was a sudden flurry of movement to Jim’s left as the historians frantically started bringing up data. Locations of mass graves, dates, analysis of the victims-

 

“It’s just,” Khan continued casually. “That you have no witnesses, save the people on my ships, who you have not asked. And I suspect that, even if you knew the exact date we left Earth, you could not date historical remains accurately enough to be sure they were from before that time. Even if you could find a way to be certain of the month someone who died hundreds of years ago was put in the ground that does not prove that they were killed by Indian troops, or that I ordered it.”

 

She leant forward, her smile widening, showing too much teeth. “Tell me I’m wrong.”

 

Kirk glanced over the historians’ notes, which were getting more complicated as he watched. The dates of…incidents had started out as a simple year but they mutated rapidly until all of them had a set of ranges, spanning anything from two years to two decades with the relevant test used annotated by each range.

 

She seemed to take their silence as confirmation and relaxed back, grinning like a shark.

 

Jim’s eyes skimmed over his own side, Chandra trying not to grind his teeth, Lui double-checking something with one of her analysts, Barnett’s deepening frown.

 

“What do you want?” Barnett asked bluntly.

 

“We want to negotiate-” Joachim began.

 

“No you don’t.” Barnett intoned. “You haven’t expressed any requests, other than that we leave you alone. You know how our Comms system works. You could have done that from the other side of the galaxy without the risk of being in range of our weapons. You haven’t offered anything and you’ve made it perfectly clear you are not willing to surrender Singh or Khan for trial. You’re not willing to compromise but you are willing to give us _Klingon ships_. Your culture practiced some sort of…gift-exchange to foster alliances if I recall, so you want something from us. And this discussion will proceed much more easily if you tell us what it is.”

 

They were silent for perhaps half a second. Then they fell into an argument that the analysts struggled to keep up with.

 

The homesigns came quicker and seemed more emphatic. The notes picked out at least four languages liberally mixed, Arabic, Hindi, a smattering of Hebrew and something else. Jim watched the parts of it they could translate blink onto his screen a moment behind the words and tried, hopelessly, to tie it to the Augment that had spoken.

 

_We -untranslatable- not reveal-_

_Love of God! Tell them we want territory._

_-untranslatable- understand territory-_

_Do not need-_

_Would provide a target-_

_‘My home is where my band’s tents are-’_

_We are Badawi now?_

_Why not?_

_-untranslatable-_

_-untranslatable- and object to the constant Sanskritisation-_

_-untranslatable-_

_-straying from the point?_

 

From what Jim could tell they were planning to lie and arguing over what would be both plausible and useful. Which wasn’t encouraging. Not surprising either.

 

He turned his attention to the annotations the analysts were adding and found that Khan apparently called Aberash ‘akka’ while Aberash called her ‘eyat’. Kirk made a mental note to find out whether these damned analysts actually had any useful training and went back to rereading the translation.

 

The frustrating thing was he couldn’t work out _why_ they wanted to lie-

 

He noticed that Layla had stopped talking, was glowering at the rest of them, a moment before she brought the debate to a close with a cutting hand gesture and a loud ‘halas’.

 

 _Arabic. ‘Stop’_. The notes informed him.

 

Layla turned back to the screen.

 

“Children.” She stated.

 

And it must have been the answer to Barnett’s question because Joachim closed his eyes and Khan put her head in her hands.

 

“We want to survive,” Layla continued. “Not merely personally but…collectively. We do not want to be the last of our kind. We do not want the youngest of us to die alone in space. We did not leave Earth just to delay our own extinction.”

 

Somehow Jim thought he should have seen that coming. Should have been able to piece it together. Because Layla had told him that most of them were sterile the first time they met, she’d used it to rationalise changing the children she’d adopted. They’d stressed at every point he’d been on that damn ship how few of them there were, how lack of numbers held them back.

 

Lui cleared her throat. “We can not allow you to adopt children who are citizens of the Federation. Even if you weren’t intending to…modify them.”

 

“We know,” Khan assured them with a false brightness. “Which is why we did not intend to ask. And since I imagine you will be thinking the worst of us, we will not kidnap any of your citizens of any age.”

 

“You’re… sterile?” Barnett enquired after an awkward pause.

 

“We were forcibly sterilised.” Aberash corrected. “Which according to International Law at the time was a crime against humanity.”

 

“We are not asking for your assistance with this.” Joachim put in quickly.

 

“Is that why you were considering lying to us?” Chandra asked.

 

“Oh so you _do_ still understand Arabic?” Khan grinned across at Joachim. “I told you we should use Sanskrit.”

 

Joachim swatted her arm and the analysts went to town on what that could possibly mean about their social structure and personal relationship.

 

Jim glanced over the Admirals again, searching for some clue about where this was going to go next. They would have had a plan if the Augments had asked for somewhere to live, a nice out of the way M-class planet and a deal that would have involved taking their stolen ships. They would have had something if they’d asked for equipment, food, resources. But he was damn sure they didn’t have a plan for this.

 

They were conferring through the message terminals, he could see that as easily as he could see the Augments’ silent sign language. It was frustrating not knowing what they were planning when he was stuck in the middle of it. Probably trying to figure out what equipment they could afford to barter for peace and more information on Klingon movements or tech advances. The ‘Fleet could probably spare some more old Mirandas or an out-dated Ptolmey class.

 

A message from the _Amundsen_ popped up asking whether all of Dr McCoy’s original observations and experimental results concerning Mahaan Singh Khan had been passed to the ‘Fleet. Kirk confirmed that they had.

 

He looked up, suddenly suspicious, and studied Chandra’s souring glare, Barnett’s schooled neutral expression and Lui’s air of satisfaction.

 

God they were actually considering it.

 

Kirk took a deep breath and schooled his features calm. He could object, but he didn’t know for sure that was what they were discussing. As much as he hated it, as much as he thought dealing with Khan was liable to end as badly as working with her husband had, it wasn’t his decision. They were Admirals and likely to ignore the advice of one lowly Captain with a habit for warping the rules. Which was probably the most aggravating thing about it, considering he was supposed to be sitting in on this for his _experience_ and _expertise._

 

Finally Barnett sighed.

 

“What would you be willing to exchange in return for specialist medical assistance?”

 

The Augments had been discussing that, planning for it, he could tell from the quick, uninterrupted response Joachim gave. Kirk tuned it out in favour of sending all three ships a quick message outlining why, exactly, an agreement with Khan Noonien Kaur would end badly.

 

At least it should have been a quick message, but Jim found he was strangely passionate about not seeing another repeat of San Francisco.

 

He sent it before he could think better of it and only picked up fragments of what Layla was saying. Surely they weren’t so desperate for intel on the Klingons, for stray pieces of their tech that they’d need this sort of assistance. Perhaps he was overacting; perhaps it was a ruse to find out what they were willing to give-

 

He got a response from the _Audacious_ almost immediately. Chandra at least seemed to agree with most of his points, but he also thought some sort of contact was better than none. That the ‘Fleet could drag their heels with any promised ‘help’ and at least have an idea what the Augments were doing-

 

Kirk was pretty sure Singh would see through it in ten minutes and started outlining that when the _Resolute’s_ message arrived. Lui was apparently very firmly of the opinion that the Federation should act to prevent sentient species suffering extinction in every case where they were not prevented by law. Which would have been a nice bit of romantic idealism if they weren’t talking about Singh-

 

Damn, they really meant it.

 

Jim brought up the transcript and read over Joachim’s points just in case there was something there that justified the risk.

 

He couldn’t see a damned thing. Intel on Klingon movements, strategies and trading routes, attack patterns, things the Federation were already monitoring. Tech they came across, but the ‘Fleet were already working on getting contacts on the Klingon homeworld, were already chasing the Klingon advances. Copies of their precious archives, well Earth and human culture had survived for centuries without them. Locations of M-class planets and resource-rich asteroids, things the Federation didn’t _need_ and were capable of finding on their own-

 

A brusque reply from the _Amundsen_ interrupted his thoughts.

 

_In case you hadn’t noticed Captain we’re a misunderstanding away from war with the Klingons. We can’t afford to waste resources scouring the galaxy for Khan when we could be at war next year and the Vulcans haven’t even begun to recover. Given the circumstances I’d rather they didn’t slip off our radar._

 

They’d been planning to go along with it, Jim realised. They’d come here knowing that after everything Singh had done they were going to hammer out some sort of alliance, some sort of contact, something to make sure that the Augments didn’t just vanish into the void. Because they saw that as the greater risk.

 

Jim swore in a hiss and wracked his brains for something, anything, in the rules that’d let him argue it. Nothing was forthcoming.

 

He noticed Spock coming closer, head tilted just slightly, in a gesture Jim had started reading as concern.

 

 _They’ve already decided_. Kirk typed, letting the PADD jut out so that Spock could read it.

 

“I see.” He replied evenly and if he seemed a little more tense well-

 

It was probably because he wanted to do something highly illogical, like interrupting a Fleet Admiral who was busy wrapping up negotiations with an exiled dictator.

 

God Jim would have loved to see that about now, his First Officer giving all these idiots what-for. He allowed himself to picture it for a few beautiful minutes before turning his attention back to the current problem.

 

They’d already decided, he couldn’t stop that so…damage control.

 

He went back over the transcript a final time and listened intently as Barnett and Khan brought things to a surprisingly amicable close. No promises on either side and no solid arrangement, yet. The rest would probably end up being done over the Coms, once it had been run past the Council-

 

He watched the _Resolute_ dive into Warp, then the _Botany Bay_ before giving the order himself.

 

He sat back in the Chair watching the way the stars bled out as his ship came up to speed.

 

Whatever the ‘Fleet ended up agreeing to, one way or another it would involve him. It would involve his crew. Because they were the only goddamn ones still alive who had any experience with Augments. Active, awake, malevolent Augments. They’d ‘chosen’ him to abduct, to use as their messenger for these ‘negotiations’. And he already knew everything the ‘Fleet did about them, as did most of his crew. With so much of the ‘John Harrison’ incident still heavily classified, the _Enterprise_ was the logical choice for whatever insane, possibly-illegal, thing they decided was necessary to keep the popsical-people on side.

 

So. Damage control.

 

They’d have to reinforce the cells somehow. He was reasonably sure they could have held Singh but then Singh had never tested it. Perhaps he could get Scotty to rig up some sort of internal shielding-

 

They’d need to move the monitoring equipment out of that room. Somewhere near by for a fast response, but separate and secure to prevent them getting access to a ship’s computer if they got out-

 

They’d need a shorter route to medical. And preferably to block off any corridors along the route just in case.

 

They’d need some specialists on the crew. Historians, may be anthropologists, someone who would have a chance of translating those oblique references they were fond of into something Jim could use.

 

They’d need a bigger security detachment.

 

And they’d need some kind of heavier weaponry. Stun blasts hadn’t stopped Singh and while he wasn’t sure whether a kill shot would either it would probably be better to avoid finding out.

 

Spock had brought him down. Jim was pretty sure that non-Vulcans couldn’t replicate the nerve pinch but surely the effects must have been studied. May be they could find a way to replicate it-

 

Whatever else happened neither Singh nor his crew were going to get the drop on them this time. This time they’d be prepared.

 

This time the Federation would come out on top.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eighteen thousand- Number based on number of active nukes on Earth. Slightly higher.  
> Harmandir Sahib- The Golden Temple. Sikh Gurdwara. North west India.  
> Varanasi- Ancient Indian city, northern India. Especially holy to Hindus.  
> Lalibela- Town in northern Ethiopia with several church buildings cut out of the mountainside. 12th-13th century.   
> Jerusalem- Ancient city holy to all three Abrahamic faiths. Much fought over.  
> Dating remains- Common archaeological tests are not hugely accurate. Dating is an approximate based on several chemical and physical tests, style of manufactured objects and existing written records.   
> ‘My home is where my bands’ tents are. I am a true Badawi’- I got this from Saladin Ahmed and have been unable to find a second source. The sentiment is in keeping with what I know of Badawin culture.  
> Badawi/Badawin- Slightly more accurate Romanised name for the nomadic peoples of the Arabic peninsula. ‘Bedouin’ via French more common term in the West.  
> Band- In the context of nomadic peoples larger than the immediate family unit but smaller than the full tribe. The group an individual travels with, usually related by blood and/or marriage.   
> Sanskritisation- Generally refers to the practice of improving the relative position of a caste by emulating higher castes. Teaching of Sanskrit in Indian schools is a touchy political issue due to ties with particular religions, castes and ethnic groups. Implication in context is that certain Indian cultures/languages are being forced on others.  
> Akka- Elder sister. Tamil  
> Eyat- Sister. Amharic  
> Forced sterilisation/crimes against humanity- Systematic or widespread forced sterilisation of a civilian population is a crime against humanity under Article 7 g of the Rome Statue along with rape, sexual slavery, forced pregnancy and ‘other forms of sexual violence of comparable gravity’. 
> 
> Thank you all for reading. The final story/part is in the works. I'll post it when it's finished, chapter by chapter like this one.


End file.
